The Fool, Reversed
by S.R.H. Fade
Summary: "Thank you for giving me the courage to change." Yu Narukami is a rookie police detective partnered with his uncle in Inaba. Adachi is the transfer student protagonist that nobody wanted.
1. Inaba

You're staring through the gas station window to the small TV perched on the counter. Silently, a heavily muscled man pounds bullets into somewhere off-screen, raw power shuddering in his hands. TV images are so realistic these days, you think, just as the station light catches on the glass between you and the image.

"_Smile_," your mother hisses.

"Welcome to Inaba," says the gas station attendant. Your mother flashes her a once-beautiful smile through the window, and the attendant's returning smile is amused. "Visiting, or here to stay?"

"Moving here for a year," your mother says sweetly. Her nails dig into your thigh. You smile at the station attendant, and her eyes flicker towards you and away.

"Just for a year? Sounds like a peaceful vacation."

"Yes, isn't that right," your mother agrees. "Tohru-kun?"

"Yes, Mother," you agree.

"Fill up the gas, Tohru-kun."

"Yes, Mother."

You open the car door, but your mother's hand seizes your wrist. "Smile," she hisses again. "I have to live in this town for a year and everyone will know everyone. Don't you dare fuck this up so early."

"Yes, Mother," you say. Her fingers let go, leaving a long red scratch crawling up your skin, and you close the door a little hard. Her eyes flash behind the car window. You glance at the attendant, but she's looking away. You unhook the gas pump and feed the machine your mother's credit card.

"Oh, I can do that when I'm done with the windshield, you know," the attendant says, not sounding all that concerned.

You pointedly jam the pump into the car in response. She is markedly ugly for a girl, you think. Scraggly bleached hair, face too thin, lips nonexistent, skin unhealthily pale. And too tall; your mother always says that a girl should be small enough to fit in her boyfriend's pocket. Are all the girls in Inaba going to be this way? "It's fine, thanks," is all you say.

"It's also my job," says the attendant. She finishes the windshield and reaches for the gas pump. You flinch away, clutching the pump. The attendant pauses. Why won't she leave you alone? Christ, you've already said you don't want help. Mother will flip her shit if you don't stand here holding this stupid pump.

Why did she do the windshield first? You stare at her hand reaching towards yours on the gas pump.

"Hey," says the attendant. "If you're going to be here a year, I recommend getting a job. Not much else to do here but study." The attendant laughs, completely clueless to what she'd just said, and extends her hand again, not to take the pump from your hand but for a handshake. "We're hiring, if you want to earn some cash. Think on it?"

You glance through the car window. Your mother's eyes bore through the glass.

Slowly, you slide your fingers into her cold, slimy palm and suppress a shudder. Her skin has the texture of a maggot. When was the last time this lady washed her hands? You take your hand away as soon as is polite; you actually feel physically ill. Oh, god, everyone in this town is going to be like her, aren't they? "Um, thanks," you say, and breathe out again when the gas meter finishes and dings.

"Tohru-kun, stop bothering her. She's hard at work," your mother says, rolling down the window. "Come back to the car."

"Have a nice day," says the attendant, blandly.

You pay the machine quickly and take the long way around the car to avoid brushing the gas attendant. If she wanted to fill up the gas for you so badly, she would have done that before washing the windshield, and you know your mother saw that. You slide into the car and close the door softly.

"Don't you pretend you didn't slam the door," she snaps, starting the car more forcefully than necessary. Her expression doesn't change from its pleasant smile; the car is soundproofed, but the windows aren't tinted. "Are you trying to get sassy with me? Break my car door to put more stress on your mother, who's coming all the way to Hicksville to ensure your grades are good enough for university? It's not _me_ going to university. _I_ pay for it. I pay for this whole trip for your sake."

You barely keep your lips from tightening. The gas attendant is waving in the rear-view mirror. You hope she gets run over by a drunk customer.

"What were you talking with that attendant about? You don't have time for friends. You should be studying. Were you talking with her about me? I bet you were."

"I wasn't," you say. You watch the gas station and its attendant recede in the rear-view mirror. You can faintly see the same action movie playing in the station window, and regret not asking for the title. You wanted to see what was next.

"You shouldn't make friends with a girl like that, anyway," your mother says. "Remarkably ugly girl. Useless if a girl can't even look presentable. Pay attention to me, Tohru-kun. What was the last thing I said?"

"A girl is useless if she can't look presentable," you echo.

"Don't speak to any whores either, Tohru-kun. Who knows what the girls out here are like. They probably go crazy, way out in the boonies like this, you know? And with all that influence from the media—have you seen that Risette? You can find a new place to live if you ever bring a girl like her home. I won't stand for that stain on your life. You've seen the news reports about how that two-timing reporter went missing—that's what happens to whores. _Smile_, Tohru-kun. You're coming with me to greet all our neighbors when we arrive. Why can't you ever listen to anything I say? Why can't you be like that?"

She points through the windshield at a dog lying on the side of the road, its tongue lolling through its fool's grin, its leg is bent with one too many joints. You can see bone through the fur, but its eyes are completely blank.

"An idiot cripple?" you ask.

"At least its harmless," she sniffs.

You close your eyes and imagine reaching through the gas station's TV screen and pulling out the gun, heavy with bullets. Your eyes stay closed, and you dream of a Velvet Room.


	2. Yosuke Hanamura

_EARLY MORNING_

No matter what the Velvet Room people say, you don't believe in destiny. You believe in eventual inevitability.

End product can be calculated like a math midterm: if x, then y. People can be broken down into variables of looks, personality, social standing, wealth, whatever—the magic ticket being, of course, talent. With certain variables, a certain output is inevitable. You change a variable, you change the output. And the older you are (as your mother perfectly exemplifies), the harder it is to change your variables. One day, you'll get a birthday card and realize that your variables are stuck, and your output is the small sum of who you are, and from there, it's a one-track course until you die.

You're best in your class at math. You're best in your class in everything, actually. It is essential that you maintain your variables in peak condition, so that you may attend a prestigious university, obtain a wealthy job, marry a beautiful girl, and have your mother's two-point-five grandchildren.

And your mother is a fucking_ dumb bitch_ if she thinks transferring you to Nowheresville will help you concentrate on your studies any more than you did in the city, but you can hardly make like your more intelligent father and leave. At this rate, the universities will only wonder why you decided to take a year to attend a junkyard instead of a school for a year before throwing your application in the rejection pile. Maybe you can transfer out. Maybe if you're really lucky, you can transfer back to your old school but, ah, you won't bet on it.

You're mentally cursing your piece of shit phone for not having a texting feature when you pass an idiot stuck in a garbage can beside a wrecked bike. You look around to make sure the coast is clear, then walk on by to your first day of school. As long as nobody saw, it doesn't matter what you do.

* * *

_MORNING_

"Today we have a new transfer student from the city, Tohru Adachi," says your homeroom teacher, sounding bored. "You can sit there."

People are whispering because a new transfer student is probably the biggest thing to happen in a town like this. You calculate, quickly: your teachers won't be able to teach for shit, you'll be learning almost a review of what you've already pushed through in your old cram school, and the homework will be tedious and time-consuming. At lunch, you'll be surrounded by boys and girls alike asking about the city schools, why you moved, what the city was like, how you like Inaba. It'll probably be the longest conversation you'll have with any girl in this school, and you're not fooling yourself by thinking you'll survive it without putting your foot in your mouth. If you're really lucky, a boy might ask you to join his failing club, which you'll have to decline because of your studies. When they finish the checklist, they'll vanish, on to talk about the next trivial aspect of their small-town lives. Tomorrow, you'll eat lunch alone.

"Nice to meet you," you lie, and don't meet anyone's eyes when you move to sit down. Your teacher begins a review of algebra you already know, and solves two equations on the board wrong. You eat lunch at your desk with a good third of your class, and answer, in this exact order, the name of your city high school, your reason for moving, what the city was like, and how you like Inaba. You accidentally call Suzume-san "Suzako-san," the name of her friend who was sitting next to her; then proceed to stammer, "I'm so sorry, Suzune-san." A boy invites you to join the basketball club, which you decline on reflex. They drift away, laughing, and you finish lunch alone.

* * *

_AFTER SCHOOL_

"You're not studying today," your mother says when you get back from school. She's arranging her hair to look like she didn't arrange it with the care and attention of an open-heart surgeon. "Tohru-kun, turn off the TV for me."

You let the commercial for the local Junes play first. For all its manufactured advertising, it does look like a nice place on the other side of the TV.

"First we're going to walk down the shopping district and say hello to our neighbors," she prattles. "Then we're going to meet your new tutor. He's good at his job and well-respected, according to what I heard, so shape up and don't give him any back-talk or stupid answers. I don't want to have to find another one.

"And I know they found that whore reporter's body hanging somewhere," she says, "but don't be crass and mention it. Nobody wants to talk about murder."

You haven't even finished unpacking. There's homework to get caught up on from transferring late into the semester, and the small remnants of your city life are still lying scattered in boxes in the middle of the empty room. There's not a single piece of furniture to break up the wide walls—not a couch to relax on or table to eat at. The small rented house is a blank space to temporarily hold your things. And here you both are, in the middle of nofuckingwhere, for the sake of "_studying_," and the first order of business is to _not study._

Your mother applies blush to her cheekbones using the only sliver of light leaking through the blinds, eyes nowhere but on her own in the compact mirror. You take a moment to swallow the vicious churning in your stomach, and brace yourself.

The shopping district is, of course, literally _a single street_. And it's cramped, and it's damn near empty, and it's old and low-budget and falling apart. You'd think a shopping district would at least have a _clothes_ store—what do these people wear, tree leaves? Wrap themselves in raw textiles from Tatsumi's? You might have cried if you weren't so furious that all your expectations had been completely on the dot. Not even anywhere you could take your textbooks to pretend to study. Well done, Mother, you think, for actually finding a place where there's nothing to do _but _study.

You wonder if you could somehow intercept the phone bill and delete a call record if you ever find the time and privacy to call Aoyama-kun from your old homeroom. If only for the pleasure of defying her, even if she would never know.

It'll have to be later. For now, you're your mother's conversational weapon of choice: "Purchasing supplies for school," and "Yes, we just moved here from the city," and "Aiko Adachi and my son, Tohru," and "Smile, Tohru-kun," and "Oh, just a change of pace, haha," and "Speak when spoken to, Tohru-kun," and "What a quaint little shop you have!" and "Yes, Yasogami High. Only a first-year," and "Interior designer, taking the year off." What utter shit—you can't believe these hillbillies can actually swallow this without running off like spooked prey. Don't they have any sense of self-preservation? They can't miss how she buys all these unnecessary knickknacks from every shop; nobody actually needs all these materials unless they're buying connections. Maybe they just don't care? Sure, nobody really wants to complain when you speak to the wallet. Then, you think with resentment, it's just you who takes the consequences; because it's you carrying her growing number of shopping bags, and both you and your mother know all these trinkets will end up in your room, with all the other things your mother doesn't want to see.

"Don't you dare make that face around other people," your mother snaps as you approach some grimy Chinese diner. You do your best mocking impression of the crippled dog on the road. Your mother pauses, and for one moment you're terrified your sarcasm has landed you in the deepest shit you've been in since you skipped homeroom four years ago; but then she nods and says, "Much better. Follow me closely and learn something. This is necessary."

Please. She doesn't like tofu _or_ Chinese food. There's nothing about this that isn't unnecessary. The trinkets, the ass-kissing, the phone-number collecting, the _desperation_. What does Mother care about these people you'll both never see again after the school year's done? Why does she need people to gossip with? What's the _point_ of small talk? Nobody learns anything, nobody cares about each other, nobody will do you any favors. Your mother is spending an entire afternoon opening channels of communication so she can waste her days talking about nothing with people she doesn't like and people who don't like her. Get a fucking job. Be productive. Do something. Be somebody. She doesn't need anybody else to do that. You can't think of a single thing you can't accomplish entirely on your own—you're proof enough of that.

Your consolation is that there's only one street to cover; you can't imagine how horrifying this adventure would be if you had a _real_ shopping district to cover. After this, you both can go home and—

"We need to talk to the employees at Junes," your mother says.

You wonder what would happen if you threw all her bags of bought relationships down on the street and walked away. Then you follow her to Junes.

"Apparently Junes is putting other shops out of business," your mother murmurs, jabbing the elevator button. "Already three have shut down, and the Konishi's store is likely next on the line. Don't associate yourself too closely with Junes, Tohru-kun. Deny that we've done grocery shopping at Junes in the city."

"The Junes commercial is irritating anyway," you say. It's actually true, you're just not irritated by it personally.

Your mother shakes her head, pushing you into the elevator. "No, everyone has Junes products in their stores, even if they don't like it. Pay attention to the details, Tohru-kun. Junes is hated and needed, so they're here to stay."

You did notice. Just because you didn't immediately blab about it to other housewives doesn't mean you didn't notice. "That's unfortunate," you say, because it is. Stuck managing a store everyone hated in a town that had nothing to offer you in return?

"It's irrelevant to you. Just follow everyone else and keep your mouth shut and you won't get caught in the controversy."

You both wander around the grocery department, but apparently people in Junes are actually _working_, and much less inclined to shoot the breeze. You would be delighted at your mother's lack of success if she weren't entirely undeterred. Instead, you take the time to purchase several heads of cabbages with her credit card without her noticing, and hide the cabbages amongst her other purchases. It'll be cabbages and tofu from Marukyu tonight, you think gleefully. She might dislike tofu, but she _despises _cabbages.

You and your mother have wandered into the electronics department when you see a teenager arranging widescreen TVs, and you know almost instantly that he's your ticket out of this store and back to the quiet of your room. Dyed hair reeks of ex-city residents like yourselves; that wouldn't mean anything if he were wearing a nametag, which he's not—so either he's new (unlikely, as he obviously knows what he's doing with the TVs) or he doesn't actually work here, he only helps out. And nobody helps out unless it benefits them, or helps avoid punishment. Therefore, he's highly likely a relative of the people who'd been transferred here to run Junes when it opened, because with Junes' shit reputation amongst locals, it was definitely not anybody native to this town. Yasogami High uniform under his apron means you're your mother's ticket to an unsuspicious conversation, especially because he looks older than you and she can pull the "please be a good influence" card. And his widened eyes when he spots you means he knows you're a face he hasn't seen before, and he's bored enough to care.

Alright, Mother, you think. Do your stuff, and then let's get the hell out of here.

"Excuse me, do you work here?" your mother asks, advancing right on cue. "We were thinking of purchasing a TV."

_What the fuck_. Your mother can't afford a TV from Junes.

"Good timing!" says the kid with obnoxious cheer. "We just got a new shipment in. You…" He's looking at you uncertainly, and you can picture the rusty gears in his head struggling to put connections together. "You're not from around here, are you?" he asks cautiously, like he barely dares to hope.

"No," your mother says warmly, "we just moved here two days ago. We're going around to see the important parts of the neighborhood today."

"I can imagine that didn't take too long," the kid says, then looks immediately embarrassed. You'd like him more for saying it like it is if he didn't obviously wish he could take it back.

"Oh, only the important parts of town," your mother says.

"Er, yes," the kid says. "That's what I meant. Hey, that's a Yasogami uniform, isn't it?" he says quickly.

"This is Tohru Adachi," your mother says. "He's a first-year."

"So you're my underclassman, huh?" says the kid with a (practiced) grin. "Yosuke Hanamura."

"Nice to meet you," you say.

"Still in high school and already working hard," your mother presses on. "What a good member of society."

Yosuke flushes. "Well, I… I'm really just trying to help out my dad, you know."

Your mother tilts her head to a precise angle. She's close. "Oh?"

"He's the manager here, so… just doing my part."

Your mother glances at you. Bingo.

"Is that so?" she says. "That's so good of you, helping your family out. Please be a good influence on Tohru-kun, wouldn't you?"

"Hey, sure, no problem. Us city kids have got to stick together." He winks at you. You wonder how many times he's practiced that in the mirror, and you return with your most harmless smile. "Can I help you guys picking out a TV? I gotta recommend the forty-two inch; it can still connect to the Internet, which is way cool, but not as expensive as the fifty-six."

"Actually, I'd love to meet your father sometime," your mother says. "Someone to talk with about the city and moving to Inaba. When he's not working, of course."

Yosuke's smile falters. "Well… he might…" Spit it out, you think. "He might be on break now," he says at last. He injects more cheer into his smile, reminiscent of pumping air into a punctured tire. If he didn't want to say it, you think, he should have just lied. "I'll go see if I can find him."

"Oh, that would be wonderful," your mother says, smiling. "Thank you, Yosuke-kun."

Yosuke disappears down an aisle, fiddling with his MP3. "Don't associate yourself with slow-witted whiners like him," your mother says. You concur, but would rather die than agree out loud with your mother.

A few minutes later, a tall, broad man rounds the corner; even if you hadn't known he was the manager, you would have assumed from the sheer authority in his shoulders. Your mother launches into a conversation about where you used to live, where Hanamura used to live, how Yasogami High is—the same old excuse about "Tohru-kun needing to focus on his studies." Fine, whatever; this could take a while. You lug your mother's trinkets over to the TVs and look for an on switch. The chances of her actually buying one aren't high—you wouldn't trust her to give an excuse for conversation that's necessarily true—so this is the closest you're going to get to such a nice TV until god knows when. You're not even allowed to watch TV at home. Man, you just want some entertainment in this godforsaken town.

Apparently, someone decided that what a TV needs is to be able to connect to _YouTube_, so there's a whole built-in section to browse YouTube videos. You browse illegally-uploaded action movies just for something to do with your hands, and manage to find the first five minutes of the film you'd seen at the gas station; sadly, high-def screen doesn't improve a Chinese bootleg. You watch as a pixelated car blows up via impossible Hollywood physics. The action hero comes back onscreen with his machine gun and starts gunning down enemies. Or… what you assume are enemies. Don't movies always work that way?

It's satisfying until the camera switches to a shot of fake blood all over the movie set, and corpse dummies under car tires. You feel nauseous; blood always did made you feel queasy. You reach around the TV for the off switch, leaning on the screen to leave a nice handprint for Yosuke to clean up later, and almost fall over.

For a second you're terrified you've pushed the TV over and that's why you lost your balance, but the TV is still standing. Your hand is touching empty air. Your arm is up to its elbow _through_ the TV screen, and it didn't come out the other end.

"Adachi-kun?" you hear faintly, and you turn around to see Yosuke in the aisle entrance, staring in horror at your arm. Shit, is all you can think. There's got to be a way to get out of this one.

Yosuke begins, "What are you—" before you mother rounds the corner and you yank your arm out of the TV. "I think I'll purchase the forty-two inch," she's telling Hanamura. "Tohru-kun, don't stand so close to the electronics."

"Go tell our deliverymen to pack up a forty-two, Yosuke. Delivery today to this address," Hanamura says, and hands Yosuke a form.

You and Yosuke stare at each other from across the long aisle.

"Sure thing, Dad," Yosuke says, and without breaking eye contact, walks away and out of sight.

You cannot believe your mother actually bought the TV.

* * *

_EVENING_

"You can meet your tutor tomorrow," your mother says. "Read the instruction manual and set up the TV for me, Tohru-kun."

She shuts the bathroom door and seconds later, you can hear the shower water running through the pipes. You turn on the yellowish light and stare at the TV in its box.

Your mother takes, on average, a half-hour shower. It's 6:37 PM. You can do this.

Cut the zipties, cut the duct tape; slide the TV out of the box. Press your hands to the screen to no effect—must be plugged in and operational. Breeze through the instruction manual in thirty seconds. Plug in power cord to outlet. Balance TV on a low table. Press the power button. Nothing. Press hands to screen. Nothing. That's not right; you know it was this TV that you put your hand through. Thoroughly read the instruction manual for five minutes before your mother drops something loudly in the shower and you panic. Plug random cords into random holes. Nothing. Change batteries in the remote. Thoroughly read the instruction manual, cover to cover, for twelve minutes. Rearrange cords in correct order; shove the HDMI cable into place with shaking fingers. Press hands to scr—

"Good boy," you mother says expressionlessly, wrapped in a bathrobe. "Don't put your dirty fingers on the screen."

You glance at the clock. 7:01 PM. The _stupid woman_ couldn't have wasted more water today, like she does on every other fucking day of her life? Goddamn her. God_damn _her. She couldn't let you have just this?

Your mother idles in the kitchen, not even bothering to put on her nightclothes yet, as if you weren't even there. She's not looking, but if you put your hand _through the TV _you can bet she'd notice. You seethe in silence, and watch intently as your mother unwraps the cabbage heads and her eyes narrow. You turn away to stare at the window, making sure she can't see the reflection of your tight-lipped smile in the TV screen.

"I'm tired. Feed yourself tonight," she snaps, and stalks into her bedroom.

You wait all of two seconds before you press your fingers to the screen. Sure enough, the screen ripples and changes to static, the tips of your fingers breaking what looks like surface tension and sinking through until your fingers have disappeared. It feels like a thin layer of water gripping your knuckles, with nothing but air on your skin on the other side.

You remove your fingers. You're not putting any more of yourself at risk until you know what this thing is.

In third grade, one of your teachers gave you a telescope, "to foster wonder about our world" or some such bullshit. You rummage through three boxes as quietly as you can before you find it, slightly cracked from where your mother threw it in with her wooden figurines and you didn't bother to rescue it. The stars aren't visible in the polluted city, and you don't care about stars anyway, but now you're glad you kept it. Slowly, you push the end of the telescope against the TV screen, and it turns to static and gives way.

You put your eye to the other end. You see nothing but white. It doesn't look like there's even a floor below. No—you see _something_—definite movement, the shadowed outline of something _moving_ in the fog—

The doorbell rings and you jump, nearly poking your eye out. You sit back and take three solid seconds to twist your expression into the ugliest scowl you can manage. Who rings strangers' doors this late at night? That's supposed to be rude. Hell, for all you know, it could be the psycho who strung a dead woman up on a TV antennae. It really is the boonies out here, good god; probably one of those towns where nobody locks their doors. Why is everyone so _hellbent_ on interrupting?

"Tohru-kun! Open the door!" your mother shouts. "And be pleasant!"

You tuck the telescope behind the TV and smooth out your uniform shirt. You resolve not to punch the asshole who interrupted.

A young man in a suit—maybe late twenties?—stands in the doorway. You notice the police badge on his suit first, and for a second you're delighted that your mother finally fucked up and he's come to arrest her; but then you notice the pack of side dishes and tin of cookies he's holding, and the small girl hiding behind his leg. Goddammit, housewarming gifts. Now your mother has something to eat other than cabbages and tofu.

"Sorry for intruding," the man says. "I would have come earlier, but I just managed to get off work. I hope it's not too late?"

"Of course not," you say. You don't move from the doorway. "May I help you?"

He looks at you with the most unnervingly calm stare you've ever seen—seeing everything, you realize with fury, and giving nothing away but the sense of a peace offering. "I'm Yu Narukami," he says. "We wanted to welcome you and your family to the neighborhood. Nanako-chan and my uncle live just down the road." He offers one bag of side dishes and hands the cookies to the girl (Nanako, probably), who takes it and shyly offers it as well.

You take the gifts. The cookies are still warm from the oven, and the side dishes look homemade. Your stomach rumbles against your will. Narukami looks concerned for point-five seconds before he catches your eye and his face smooths.

Holy shit, he's good.

You hate him.

"Tohru-kun, who is it?" your mother's voice says.

"Neighbors," you say, and haul the food off to the kitchen. Your mother can handle _Yu Narukami_ and his calm, smug face.

"We brought housewarming gifts," Narukami is saying to your mother. "I apologize for intruding so late at night; I just got off work."

Your mother fidgets in place; she washed all her makeup off, and though you bought her time to change into clothes, she didn't have time to reapply. Good-looking man within two decades of her age? Of course she wants to throw herself at him. "Ah, you must work hard. What is it you do?"

"I'm officially a forensic psychologist at the police station here," says Narukami, "but it's a small station, and most of the work I do is detective work with my uncle. I also tutor students part-time."

"Oh! You're _that_ Narukami!" Your mother laughs, hitting each high note precisely so it sounds like a laugh. "Come in, come in. Tohru-kun, this is your tutor."

_Shit_.

"Oh," is all you say, and stare at Narukami. He steps through the door and looks back at you. He came, you realize, because you're going to be his student for the next year, and he's come to make the all-important first impression on his own terms—all this housewarming bullshit, the cookies and the dishes, an excuse and a prop. Like your mother, prowling up and down the shopping district, cornering shop owners and sealing the meeting with a purchase, but Narukami's sealing this deal with food.

"Nice to meet you," you say. You smile and wave.

"I also help Nanako-chan with her homework at around the same time," Narukami says. He gestures to Nanako hiding behind his leg, but he won't stop looking you in the eye, as if he were speaking to you instead of your mother. "We usually meet at the Dojima house; it's down the road from here."

"If you wouldn't mind, I'd really like Tohru-kun to focus as hard as he can on his schoolwork," your mother says. "Would it trouble you too much to meet here instead?" You shoot her a look; she's pushing it a little far.

"We can definitely try it," Narukami says, very evenly. "Nanako-chan? Do you mind coming to the Adachi's some nights?"

Nanako shakes her head.

"Would you like something to drink?" your mother asks, already moving towards the refrigerator. "How about you, little girl?"

Nanako clutches Narukami's leg even tighter and makes a small noise. Your mother smiles, close-lipped, even as her nose wrinkles. Narukami's hand moves suddenly to cradle Nanako's head.

"Perhaps just water," Narukami says. "We won't be here long."

Your mother's next smile says entirely too much; it pleases her to serve guests drinks, even if they only asked for water out of politeness. It makes you uncomfortable just to look at her smile. "Tohru-kun, why don't you go study? Narukami-san and I are going to talk."

"Tohru-kun can stay," Narukami-san says immediately. "It'd be a good opportunity for him to get to know his tutor."

Your mother waves a hand. "No need. Tohru-kun, go."

You swallow hard. The TV stands silent just three feet away. Your mother turns her back, and Narukami's head tilts just an inch.

"Actually, it's getting late," says Narukami, checking his watch. "Dojima-san will wonder where Nanako went, you understand. Nanako, how about we help Adachi-san unpack the dishes and then we go back?"

"Oh, no," your mother says, flustered, "there's really no need—"

"We'd like to. We're sure you had a long day," says Narukami. "Nanako?"

She hops to her feet and putters into the kitchen; still protesting, your mother follows them out of sight. "Cabbages?" you hear Narukami say, sounding amused.

You have, at most, ten seconds. You do the calculations.

You'll go up to your room, where you'll get caught up on schoolwork you already learned and your classmates already did. Narukami will take Nanako and his smug fucking face and leave, and your mother will lecture you about all the things you did wrong tonight. You'll go to school tomorrow and maybe field a few dozen other questions from nosy students pumping the city-boy transfer student for information, and then eat alone with all your lack of friends. You'll avoid Yosuke, the only potential friendship you have in this godforsaken place that was ruined because a TV decided to swallow your hand. You'll attend afternoon classes, and then you'll come straight home to be tutored even _further_ by Narukami and his smug fucking face for _hours_, and then go to your room and do _more_ schoolwork, and then wake up the next morning and attend morning classes alone and eat lunch alone and attend afternoon classes alone and be tutored by fucking _Narukami_ and study alone again and eat dinner alone and again and agai—

You have six seconds. You watch the kitchen doorway carefully and dip your fingers through the screen, then your hand. You have no idea how you're going to explain this if they walk out now. You're up to your shoulder—static enveloping your chest—

"Tohru-kun!" your mother calls.

_Fuck you_, you think. You pitch backwards, and fall through.


	3. Chie Satonaka

_"The Velvet Room does not help its guests," says the old man. "The Velvet Room _provides_. We like to keep our guests' options available—we consider it the highest form of service, the best line of work. But the Velvet Room does not help, does not lead, does not even assist or intervene in the fulfillment of its guests' contracts. All we do is protect the opportunities that are rightfully yours."_

_"And so the choices you make are only your own," the young woman murmurs. "Even the ones you make in believing you have none."_

_The foggy water slides past the glass windows. The control panel has no labels on its buttons, and none of them are lit. There is no sound but your breathing. "Are we going up," you ask, "or down?"_

_They look to you patiently, waiting._

* * *

_EVENING_

You can't stop smiling.

Look at all this open space! Well—no, you can't look at it, because of all the fog. You're somewhere in the middle of a vast, three-dimensional maze of metal walkways and ladders—like a construction site? A TV studio's set, but bigger? The backstage riggings of a theatre? You can't see the end; there's fog thick enough that you can barely see your own hand, and no matter where you turn the walkways stretch out further into the white distance. You can't see where you would have ended up if you hadn't landed on the walkway. You can't see the entrance you fell from. You most certainly can't see an exit. The world goes on for infinite space and, possibly, infinite time.

Goodness, you'll just have to explore _all_ of it, won't you? All this wide free space. Nobody to stop you. Nobody to deal with. Just every possible pathway to everywhere. You step forward without fear, and dare to straighten your back. You can take up space. There's space for you here.

You feel like you're going to start skipping, your feet are so light. You dare to even crack a smile. Are you dreaming? Does it matter?

If you begin to feel tired after fifteen minutes, it's only because you're out of shape from sitting at a desk at all hours. The world stretches on and you keep walking. When you next check your watch, an hour and a half has passed, there's still so many places to go, and you feel like your head is going to split open—nausea from not eating dinner? The fog tastes chalky on your tongue and slimy in your lungs. You can't see anything moving in the fog anywhere, and the walkways never end and never change.

You still can't stop grinning. You feel lightheaded from feeling like you're going to puke your guts out and absolutely _great_ for no reason.

So you flip open your phone to call Aoyama-kun.

Aoyama-kun is a quiet boy who'd sat next to you in homeroom, back at your old high school in the city. He'd been in the library a lot, and he was always next to you, and one day you ended up sitting at his library table and three hours later you were working through algebra together. He hadn't had the best grades, though neither did he have the worst; to be honest, a lot of your relationship had been part-tutoring, part-study group. In that sense, he'd been lucky to have you as a friend; he was always barely in the top hundred in school rankings, and you'd taken consistent first for the last three years. He didn't like noise when he studied, and was always suggesting new places to go (many of them you'd conveniently neglected to inform your mother of when you visited them, as she'd only take the opportunity to bitch you out). He had a fondness for physical paper maps, and would mark down good coffee shops for studying there. He'd also mark down spots for dates, and his map had five red X's where he'd confessed to five different girls in five different locations and been rejected five different times (all in the short time you knew him). You think you were probably more bothered by his failures than he was; you'd asked if he wanted to maybe take a break, blow off steam, get some post-rejection ice cream, and he would only put his head down and keep working. He did a lot of that. You're not sure that in the entire time you knew him, you two ever made eye contact.

He refused to speak for himself, either, when your mother found out how frequently you studied together. You remember hearing her voice on the phone, incredulous and panicked, and watching Aoyama-kun put his head back down and scratch out the next equation.

You don't really remember what his voice sounds like, especially not now when the pounding headache is making it hard to think. You barely see the 'no reception' signal. Which is a little disappointing, you'll admit, but maybe you'll call later. Or maybe you won't! Gosh, you have no idea what's going to happen next. You might not ever go to school again. You might not go home. Who knows what you'll find in this fog?

You force your fingers to shut your phone and welcome the slimy fog into your lungs, grinning like a loon, when you hear screaming.

It's the first noise you've heard in almost two hours; you nearly jump out of your skin. It's a woman, far off in the distance, sounding like her limbs are being torn from their sockets inch by inch, and you have no idea where it's coming from. Nothing looks different. _Is_ anything different?

You break into a jog, then a sprint when the screams are neither closer nor farther. The clanging of the metal walkway under your feet doesn't drown out her voice in the slightest. She sounds just up ahead, and just behind, and just over the railing to the left, _and_ the right.

"Hello?" you shout. "Hello!?"

She doesn't stop, but you think you can hear someone—some_thing_—breathing. You turn to your right, and for the first time, you see shapes moving in the fog.

"Hello?" you say again.

The shapes seem to pause, then grow. Coming closer.

You see teeth. Teeth the size of your head.

The hair on the back of your neck stands up when it finally hits you: You're in a foreign dimension inside a hideously expensive TV and you can't see for shit while you listen to a woman being tortured in surround sound and a set of teeth the size of small tombstones come right towards you. And you just shouted like a fucking broadcast of exactly where you are. You're so stupid. You're _so_ _stupid_, thinking this place was cool and new and exciting. You haven't seen a single person in the last hour and that's probably for a good _reason_. You don't want to die. You don't want to be here. You don't even want to talk to people, let alone fight someone for your life.

Your muscles feel like they've turned to ice.

Can you remember where you came from? Why didn't you mark which walkway you came down? Should you turn back? The woman chokes on her breath and pushes sound out of her lungs even more desperately. You see nothing but fog and the teeth coming closer and closer, and your vision swims from your pounding headache.

You clear the slick sound of saliva. You feel your limbs begin to shake, and you stumble into a blind sprint. Your head spins with the sudden movement; you bang into the left railing hard and push on.

The fog rushes into your lungs and you feel another wave of spinning. Is it the _fog_ that's making you feel like this? The fear? Or is this just a bad dream? This can't be real; you went through a TV, for god's sake. This isn't real, it just feels real. You have to get out of the fog, but you can't see the end. The woman's high note of pain rings on and on; did she stay in the fog too long, is that why she's—whatever she is? The wave of endless possible walkways seem to multiply, twice as many corners to turn, too many choices to make, none of them clear.

There's a breath on the back of your neck.

You shriek and trip and skid across the metal walkway. There's no one behind you, your knee is wrecked and dripping blood, the woman is sobbing and screaming in alternating breaths. Shit, shit, shit. Don't predators usually smell the blood of their wounded prey?

"I'll do anything," you gasp, hiding your face in your arms, and realize it's true. You're begging thin air and you don't to go through what that woman is going through, doesn't even want to know what's happening to her as long as you get out with all your skin. "I'll do anything, I just don't want to die, please…"

There's a footstep—not footsteps, walking towards or away from you, just a step singular. You freeze. Your vision swims; you feel like you're going to throw up. Your lizard brain screams at you to play dead. The woman screams with all the air in her lungs.

Someone is standing on the walkway. You don't see features. You see an outline in fog, and a glint of sickly yellow.

"My mother will be alone," you whisper.

The woman sounds like she's inches from your head, her pain pouring out of her mouth and into your ears. Your heartbeat is pounding in your skull; you barely feel your skinned knee for the blood speeding through your veins. Every breath you take is shallow and deafeningly loud.

The woman stops screaming.

When you look up, the person is gone.

You glance in every direction, then swing yourself and your damaged leg off the railing onto the lower walkway and bolt for it. Your knee is throbbing and you feel your lungs tightening in your chest with every loud clang of your feet on the walkway, but your lizard brain tells your rabbit heart that now's the time to run, not hide. The fog rushes towards you as you speed through the white world, and even as you run you imagine teeth emerging from the fog in front of you and yourself speeding headlong into its jaws, unable to stop.

And then your feet hit concrete, and you stumble to a halt, gasping for breath. It's a clearing—the first you've seen. The fog is thinner here, so thin you can see the end of the clearing some fifty feet away, all enclosed in sturdy railings. In the center is a circular pattern, crime scene outlines of corpses strewn across it. And there, sitting neatly, buzzing with static, is a stack of TVs.

You drag yourself to the TVs and shove your hand through without much thought; it occurs to you that you have no idea where this goes. Panting, you stagger in a circle, trying to make your brain think rationally, when you see shapes in the direction you came from. It doesn't even occur to you to move. You stand there watching them come closer; as first you see the teeth, bright white squares grinding the air between them, then the tongue, dripping saliva, then the lips, stretched wide and manic, and then… nothing else. It's a featureless, gaudily-painted skull with only teeth for eating, and it's taking its sweet time coming for you.

You scream, and the woman in the distance screams with you. The mouth looks _delighted_.

You throw yourself through the TV screen as the woman begins to sob.

* * *

You hear screaming.

"—through the _TV_, he just came out of it, like his whole body—oh my god, that's _blood_—"

"Who the hell—"

You scramble to your feet, but your ruined knee buckles and you end up dragging yourself away from the voice like a drunken bug; there's so much light and you feel like you can't breathe—

"—down! Hey, it's me! Breathe, okay? Deep breaths. Oh god, what am I doing. Um, calm down, look at me. Chie, it's just his knee, I don't see anything else. Adachi-kun, can you hear me?"

When you open your eyes, you're unsurprised to find yourself in Junes, with Yosuke Hanamura's terrified face front and center of your vision. You must have subconsciously put it together from Yosuke's voice. You take another shaky breath and wrap your shaking hands around yourself. You're back in reality, you're in public; you have to pull yourself together.

"Dude, what _happened_?" Yosuke reaches out without thinking, but freezes and withdraws as if he's afraid you'll bite his fingers off. _Rude_. "Um—Chie, do you have a bottle of water on you?"

"Oh, I, um—yeah, I should, somewhere—"

"Thanks," says Yosuke, voice cracking; he coughs loudly, trying to get the shakiness out of his voice. "You okay?"

You're feeling like your skull is too small, that's what you feel like. You close your eyes.

"Whoa, man, stay with me! Don't go into the light, whatever you do! Adach—"

"Shut the fuck up," you whine.

"That's—okay, four consecutive words, that's a… good sign… probably… I think?"

"Here," says a girl's voice, and you crack your eyes open again. A girl with short brown hair is holding out a thermos like she's half-afraid you're going to die if you don't drink and half-afraid you're going to grow extra limbs. You take the thermos before Mama Yosuke decides he wants to spoonfeed you water.

"Dude," says Yosuke-senpai, "you look like hell."

"You look like you came out of a _TV_," the girl says, incredulously. "Yosuke, what kind of TVs has Junes been ordering?!"

"Firstly, what does somebody typically look like when they've come out of a TV?"

"Yosuke!"

"Sorry, just—this guy came by earlier and accidentally stuck his arm through a forty-two inch screen. Sorry for not sharing your hysteria." Yosuke laughs a little. It sounds hysterical.

"The TV my mother bought," you say, in a very small voice. "I went through it."

"Oh my god," says the girl.

"What, like your whole _body_?

"Yosuke, he really doesn't look like he's in any shape to talk," Chie (?) says, sounding more like she's in no shape to comprehend it. "We gotta get him out of here."

"Man, you're lucky Junes is closed early and I picked today to clean up after-hours," Yosuke says. "C'mon, there's a futon in the break room."

You try to stand, but your knee chooses now to feel like it's on fire. A pair of strong arms wrap around your chest. "Oh gosh, somebody needs to put a bandage on that leg. Yosuke, help me with him," Chie says.

"No, stop," you say, probably. The last thing you want is other people touching you right now; you're shaking too hard with left-over adrenaline and fear to decipher what to do for this new social hurtle. Another set of arms add themselves to your support, and you're so exhausted. All you want is for them to go away.

* * *

_EARLY MORNING_

You wake up to the sound of the news.

"…discovered in the fog today. The police are investigating Taro Namatame, who was involved with both victims, as a possible suspect, but no other details have been released—"

You groan and roll over.

"Oh good, you're up," a voice says. The volume of the news significantly lowers. "Sorry, didn't really want to try poking you or anything."

You crack your eyes open. Yosuke is slumped in a chair, rubbing his eyes and looking exhausted. "How do you feel?" he asks. "Any better?"

What the hell does he care? You groan and roll over the other way.

"That bad, huh? Ugh…" Yosuke stands and cracks what sounds like every inch of his spine. "I kind of hate to have to say this, but we're not supposed to be here. We gotta split before the first-shift employees open Junes."

You open your eyes.

Holy shit. You've been out of the house for the entire night. You haven't studied, you don't have your homework—you don't have your uniform, you're in your torn and bloody pajamas, you don't have your shoes—did your mother realize you were gone? Did she call the police?

Your mother is going to _murder_ you.

You sit up too fast. Your stomach heaves, and you lean over the side of the futon and throw up.

"Oh god, okay, um, lie back down, I got this," Yosuke blabbers. "Man, I will remember this the next time someone tells me I should have lots of children…"

You lean back and stare at the tiny splatter of stomach acid on the linoleum floor. All things considered, puke is _much_ more obnoxious than a handprint to wipe up. You watch as Yosuke cleans it with antibacterial wipes, grumbling the entire way, but you can hear he doesn't mean it. It would bother you less, you think, if he did. "Okay, let's scram," he says, tossing the rag in a sink. "You need help?"

"That's okay," you say. Every inch of you aches, but you don't want to deal with him touching you.

"Where do you live? I've got a bike—I mean, it's kind of a piece of trash, and people leave garbage cans out on the road right in the bike lane way too often, but I'll go slow. Hey," he says, when you don't respond. "Adachi-kun?"

Oh, you realize. The idiot who'd crashed into the trash can had been _him_. Now, wasn't that properly terrible of you, not helping someone who was so eager to help you? No, you think quickly, he probably has some ulterior motive. He's probably doing it because people falling out of TVs is the most exciting thing that's happened since he moved here. Ugh, it's too early in the day to be thinking about this.

"Adachi-kun?" Yosuke is saying. "C'mon, you can't walk anywhere in this shape. Go home and sleep it off."

"I can't," you mutter. "There's school today."

"You can't be serious," Yosuke says, half-laughing. "You look like you need to sleep at least another day. And I mean, I tried, but I don't think that bandage on your leg is quality work."

You drag your phone out of your pocket. You have twenty minutes to get to school. "No, it's good enough," you say, and offer your most harmless, most apologetic smile. "I still have lots to catch up on. Late transfer and all. You know, right?"

"You're serious," Yosuke says in disbelief.

"You have to get to school too, right? I'll just come with you."

"I'm late all the time," he says dismissively. "You, though…"

"Please? I won't be any trouble," you say, a little whining. Your heartbeat picks up at the mere _thought_ of going home now and having to explain this… this thing. And what about your attendance record, and all the topics that a teacher can cover in one day alone…

Yosuke looks at you doubtfully, then sighs. "You're crazy. What size uniform are you?"

You blink. You hadn't even thought of that. "I… Uh—"

"Just kidding, I only have one size. But at least you're not any bigger than me." He rummages in a cupboard, pulls out what must be a spare uniform for emergencies, and holds it up. "Not that bad. It'll pass, I guess. And I've got shoes around here somewhere…"

"Th-Thank you. _So_ much," you say, a little numbly. Too early in the day to be thinking about this. "I'm… I'm sorry for the trouble, I didn't think about the uniform."

"Hey, it's fine. But you better sleep through every single one of your classes, man; I'm gonna check," says Yosuke. "Get one of your first-year friends to take notes for you, okay?"

"Yeah, good thinking. Thanks for the advice," you say. You don't have any friends to take notes for you.

* * *

_MORNING_

The entire day is a slug. You lie on your desk through classes like a slug, you crawl down the hallways at a slug's pace, time oozes past like a gelatinous slug, your teachers' voices slide through your ears like slugs. You'd say you wish you could die, but now that you've actually thought you were going to die, you believe you have stricken the phrase from your repertoire forever. Really, you wish you could be unconscious until you feel better. So you'd really just like to sleep.

The worst part is, you _do_ sleep. Teachers do try to wake you up, and when they do you try to stay awake, but as soon as you've answered their question, your head's back on the desk like your strings have been cut. An entire half a day of school without notes. Doesn't matter that it's stuff you've likely learned before; you are _fucked_.

By the time lunch rolls around, you feel nauseous with dread and antsy with a full bladder. You drag yourself down the hallway with all the energy of a slug and survive the bathroom without falling asleep on the toilet, then you drag yourself back down the hallway to class, clutching your middle. You can't tell if your stomach is so upset because you're exhausted or desperately hungry—either way, you feel like shit, and you don't have any food anyway.

You almost throw up again when a voice declares "Underclassman GET!" and two arms seize both of yours to haul you in the opposite direction of your class. You sputter nonsense until you realize it's Yosuke and Chie who've got you sandwiched between them, and they're marching you off in the direction of the roof. "I made you lunch," says Chie, beaming and holding a bento box. "Yosuke never wakes up in time to make his own, let alone anyone else's."

"I'll have you know I woke up right on time," Yosuke says over your head. "It's just a little hard to make food in the middle of Junes."

"Guys," you protest weakly.

"We've got you," says Chie.

They sit you down on the roof, where Chie sets the bento down on your lap and opens a cup of instant noodles for herself. You stare at the box; it's green, with little puppy faces in the corner. "You really didn't have to," you say blankly. A girl made you lunch. Why is this more surreal than falling through a TV?

"Oh, um," says Chie, blushing, "it's not like that or anything. Just. You need food to recover, you know! Lots of protein, especially."

"Aw, you didn't make me lunch too?" Yosuke wheedles.

"You can starve."

"It was just a DVD! I'm gonna replace it!"

"You're not the one who came out of a—" She cuts herself off, as if it's too surreal to say aloud. "…Adachi-kun, are you feeling any better?"

Don't screw this up, you think. Even if it's "not like that," you literally have this girl's lunch on your lap and she's concerned for your welfare. You're actually interesting to her, mostly because you fell out of a TV, but still interesting. You do your best to smile. "Actually, I feel much better today."

"Well, that wasn't very convincing," Chie says. "Are you sure you don't want to go to health center?"

You're _not_ wasting your lunch break that way. "No, it's fine! Really. Thank you."

"How's your leg, then? Yosuke didn't botch up the bandaging too badly?"

"I assure you I botched it up quite well," Yosuke says.

"I have no idea," you say honestly. "I can look up how to bandage things when I get home, though; it's not a big deal."

"Nope, I've got this!" says Chie. "I was one of those kids who went around running up trees, sometimes kind of literally, so you bet I know how to wrap up a knee. Here—can I roll up your pant leg?"

"Oh, um, uh—sure," you say, a little weakly. You just know you're blushing all the way down to your neck. "Thanks?"

"Meanwhile," says Yosuke. "What the _hell_ was that, man?"

"Yeah, seriously," says Chie. "I heard about your arm thing at Junes yesterday, but—Yosuke, what _is_ this? What makes you think this is _remotely_ how you tie a bandage?"

You laugh a little, despite yourself, then immediately wish you hadn't and you're not sure why. Chie just grins. "I admitted I botched it, didn't I?" Yosuke grumbles. "C'mon, Adachi-kun, you owe us an explanation. How about we go from the beginning?"

There isn't actually much of a beginning, when you think about it. Not a lot happened until the end of the two hours you spent in there. Regardless, you tell them everything (except, of course, anything more than a passing mention of your mother), from the plugging in the TV, to the arrival of your tutor, to the telescope, to the fog, the teeth, the screaming woman and the walkways. It takes less than five minutes, and by then, Chie's done fixing your knee, and she's slurping away at her ramen noodles.

"If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I would have said you were crazy," Chie muses.

"You don't think I'm crazy?" you ask.

"Nope, I definitely saw you come out of the TV," says Chie. "And I know I'm not crazy, because Yosuke saw it too. Just… geez—none of this makes sense at all."

"I dunno," says Yosuke, "it makes a lot of sense that Yu-sensei is his tutor. The guy's good at his jobs—ow!"

"Do you think it's that specific TV?" Chie says. "Maybe it's a freaky Junes thing."

"_For the last time_, we don't order TVs with alternate dimensions inside them," Yosuke says. His joke is light, but you can see the strain in his face. "And I know that he stuck his hand through a different TV than the one we delivered. That one was display only; the actual products don't come out of their original boxes." He crosses his arms, closing his eyes in thought. "…Go back to the part about the flying teeth?"

You frown. That's honestly the part that worries you most—the knowledge that the world inside the TV isn't just empty walkways and fog, but home to living creatures. That world is alive. "It wasn't human, not even remotely," you say. "I don't know _what_ it was. A—a monster, I guess? I know I sound crazy, but I _saw_ it," you mumble, rubbing the back of your neck.

"But the screaming woman—" Chie shudders; for a moment she looks honestly perturbed, and she stares down at her noodles. "This is too weird. First the dead reporter, then the TV thing, then the enka singer this morning…"

"Enka singer?" you echo.

"You didn't hear?" she says, looking surprised. "Everyone's talking about it. They found the enka singer this morning, hanging from a phone line just like the reporter. You know, the enka singer who'd been the wife of the guy who'd been cheating with the reporter. Geez, I got her autograph for my mother once too, and now…"

You run that by in your head—a woman screaming in a dangerous foreign dimension last night, and this morning a dead woman on a phone line. "Hey," you say. "You don't think that's related?"

Chie looks at you with surprise, then realization. "You don't think she died because she ended up in that world, do you? That the—the teeth thing got her?"

"I'm not going to joke," you say. "I felt so sick from just being in there for two hours that I can see that place killing you if you stay there too long. If I hadn't found the stack of TVs, I wouldn't be here."

Yosuke's not smiling. "They said the enka singer was missing for almost two days."

"There's really no solid connection," Chie-san says.

"Do we really need one?" Yosuke says forcefully. "He's right. You don't think the coincidence itself is way too weird?"

"_Everything_ about this is weird!" Chie cries. "We're talking about _flying teeth_ inside a TV—"

The roof door opens, and Chie shuts her mouth with an audible clack. A slim, beautiful girl pokes her head through the roof door and—you feel your mouth dry up—her dark eyes are looking right at you. "Um, Chie?" she says. Even her voice is pretty. "I got those notes from Kondo-kun that you wanted."

"Oh, um, thanks, Yukiko!" Chie says, trying way too hard to be casual. You wince as Chie hops to her feet. "Yeah, uh—I'll just take those."

"And I need to run back to the inn today right after class," Yukiko says. She glances over Chie-san's shoulder at you again, curious. "Sorry, I'll—see you later, I guess. Have fun eating lunch with your friends."

"Yeah! See you later."

The roof door closes again. "You gonna tell Yukiko-san?" Yosuke asks.

"How can I?" Chie says, flipping through the notes distractedly. "She might be my best friend, but all that means is that when I start spouting stuff about TVs and monsters, she'll cart me off to the asylum herself for my own good. Here," she says, and hands you the notes. "Yosuke said you looked like you weren't going to survive morning classes, and you've only been here for a day so you might not know too many people, so I asked Yukiko to ask an underclassman she knows for his morning notes."

You can't stop staring. Chie smiles, shaking the notes at you, and you take the notes, almost reverently. "_Thank_ you," you say, and mean it. Who _are_ these people? Do people like this really exist?

"Yeah, no problem!" she says. "I also made that food for you too, so don't forget to eat it!"

"And maybe don't forget who saved your ass from passing out on the floor of Junes?" Yosuke pleads as you open the bento and thank Chie for the lunch. You take back any earlier charitable thoughts towards Yosuke; yeah, Yosuke won't die if he misses one lunch. A girl made you lunch. No way in hell you're going to miss this.

You pop a piece of meat into your mouth and see your life flash before your eyes.

"How is it?" Chie asks, almost anxiously.

You swallow. You've almost been eaten alive by flying teeth, you think. You will survive. "It's great!" you say, and smile. "I knew you'd be a wonderful cook."

Chie beams. "Wow, really?"

"Ah, but… I still feel a little ill from the TV," you say, faking a grimace. "I don't think I can eat all of this by myself. Yosuke-senpai, would you like to share?"

"You bet!" Yosuke says, and snags a piece with his bare fingers. He chokes in less than a second. "What the hell is this?" he exclaims, mouth still full of food. "Chie, this is disgusting!"

"Don't give me that," Chie-san says, going back to her noodles. "Adachi-kun liked it."

"It's really delicious," you say.

"Why, _you_," Yosuke-senpai hisses. You smile harmlessly at him.

But you do take the bento home with you, promising to wash the box for Chie. You don't know if you'll survive finishing it, but you're going to try.

* * *

_AFTER SCHOOL_

Classes end, and you have no idea how you're going to get back into your house without your mother noticing you only have a stack of notes, a bento box that isn't your own, and no bookbag at all. You're in the middle of wondering if you can pass off Kondo's handwriting (whoever Kondo is, anyway) as your own when Chie waves at you from the school gates, accompanied by a rather hungry-looking Yosuke.

"Hey, we're going down to Junes today," Yosuke says. "Gonna investigate the TVs and all that, you know? Definitely not going in, though," he adds. "Wanna come with?"

You stare at Chie, who looks at you expectantly, and Yosuke-senpai, who, for all the shit you've put him through these past few days, is still giving you his easy smile. "I can't," you say, which is familiar, but the looks of disappointment on their faces aren't. Has this ever happened to you before? Has anyone ever asked you to hang with them after school, and been actually affected when you said no? "Sorry, it's… my mother," you say. "She'll worry. She might have noticed I was gone last night."

"Oh, that makes sense," Chie says. "That's sweet of you, Adachi-kun."

"Ah, it's… um," you say. You're blushing again.

"We'll walk you home, then," Chie says. "Which way's your house?"

"The bike offer still stands, if you're not feeling well," Yosuke says.

You look at the bike leaning against Yosuke's leg. The chain rattles loosely on the gears, the handlebars flake with rust, and the duct tape holding the front tire together is peeling. You laugh nervously. "Aha, um…"

"Good decision," Chie says.

"Hey! He didn't say no!"

"I meant no," you say.

"Damn," Yosuke says. "You look cute and cuddly, man, but you're _cold_."

"I think he's nice," Chie laughs.

You're blushing furiously again. God _dammit._ "M-My house is that way," you stammer, and Yosuke laughs and leads the way.

"So you transferred here just a few days ago, didn't you? Why'd you move to Inaba?" asks Chie.

"Oh," you say. You can feel your mood deteriorating, but you try for a smile anyway. "Well, I guess my mother wanted a break from her job. And she wanted me to focus more on school. To get into a good university."

"Really? This isn't really the place to do it," says Yosuke. Chie looks at him, confused, and Yosuke shrugs. "Well, I mean… no offense intended, but Yasogami High isn't exactly state-of-the-art, you know? It's not going to impress on a college application, even if you do get top marks. Wouldn't you have stayed in a city high school if you were going for a big university?"

"Exactly!" you say. "It doesn't make sense—" and you stop, and swallow the rest of that sentence. You start again. "Well, she's my mother. She works hard for both of us."

"School's pretty important to you, huh?"

You smile cheerfully. "You know what they say: if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything."

Yosuke looks up at the sky. "That's—"

"That's Yukiko," says Chie.

You follow her gaze to see a rather harassed Yukiko speaking to a TV reporter on camera. You glance back at Chie; she's glaring like she could kill the interviewer with sheer force of will. "Um, but that's just the local news station, right?" You scratch the back of your head. "I heard they did want to interview her about the inn…"

"But she's already said she doesn't want to be interviewed! And then she already gave them _two_ interviews!" Chie says. You take an instinctive step back. "Ghh, I cannot _believe_—they're just _hounding_ her all week, at the inn, at night, to school and back—"

"Hey, whoa there," says Yosuke, but Chie pushes him aside, already running down the street.

"I'm gonna kick his mic back in his face!"

"Oh, no," Yosuke mutters, and takes off after her. "C'mon, Adachi-kun!"

You grip your notes tightly and hurry after him. You can't let the best seats be taken, can you?

"No, it's okay," Yukiko is saying to Chie, then to the reporter: "Please, I can't give an interview at this time. Please…"

"You couldn't have waited until she at least got home from school to jump her?" says Chie. "She's busy working hard! And she already gave you an interview about the reporter, even when she didn't have to! Why do you want another one?"

"With the death of the enka singer—"

"She already gave you an interview about that, too! And the singer isn't even remotely related to the inn!"

A pair of students walking by peer curiously down your street. Yukiko is blushing hard, looking like she wants to disappear. "Chie…"

"Come on," Chie says. "If you really want an interview, you can talk to Yukiko's mother, right? You _did_ talk to her mother before accosting her daughter on her way home from school, didn't you?"

The reporter frowns. "That's…"

"We can come back," suggests the cameraman. The reporter doesn't move. "When we've got an official story, we can come back," the cameraman insists.

"We'll be in touch," says the reporter. He nods to the cameraman, who wraps up the wires and stuffs them back in their van too fast to not be relieved. Yosuke steps back to allow them room to drive away.

"I'm sorry, Chie," says Yukiko, and sighs. "I don't know how they found out about it…"

"About what?"

Yukiko glances first from Yosuke to you, pursing her pretty lips together. "Oh, this is Adachi-kun, a new friend of ours. He's a first-year," says Chie.

"If you're worried about me keeping a secret, you don't have to. I don't know anybody to tell anyway," you say, and laugh a little. Ugh, way to make yourself look like a loser.

Yukiko smiles worriedly, glances down the deserted street, and lowers her voice anyway. "My mother might be stepping down as manager for a little while, leaving me in charge," says Yukiko. She won't look any of you in the eye. "I… I can't say anything else about it. It's not official yet. I don't know how they found out, let alone how they moved for an interview so fast…"

"I can't believe how rude those two were! When you guys hadn't even announced it yet, too!" says Chie. "I saw them waiting outside Yasogami all today. The nerve of them!"

Yukiko puffs out a small laugh. "Well, anyway…" She gives a small bow to you and Yosuke. "I'm sorry about that commotion. I didn't mean to pull you into my business."

"More like Chie pulled us into your business," Yosuke says. Chie glares at him. "I didn't say it wasn't warranted! I agree, the guy was being a jerk."

"Yeah, it's just good he's gone now," you manage to say. Yukiko is probably the most beautiful girl you've ever met in real life and she's looking _right at you_. You swallow hard. "Um, I'm Tohru Adachi! N-Nice to meet you."

Yukiko smiles back without teeth. Cute and polite. "Yukiko Amagi, second year. Pleased to meet you, although… I'm sorry it was under these circumstances."

"C'mon, I'll walk with you back to the inn," says Chie. "Adachi-kun, don't let Yosuke pressure you into riding his bike."

You laugh a little, internally scrambling for something to say that would make Chie stay. You can't think of anything. Dammit, dammit. She was going to walk home with _you_.

"It's okay, really," says Yukiko. "I'm sure you had plans with Yosuke and Adachi-kun…"

"Nothing that couldn't suffer a little detour," says Chie, and smiles brightly. "I gotta look after my friends, you know."

* * *

You make it to your bedroom door before your mother calls, without looking away from the TV: "How was school today?"

_Well_. You have very detailed notes on material you already know written by a person you've never met. You've spent the night in the department store you were banned from associating yourself with. A girl made you a lunch that could probably kill a horse to help you recover from almost becoming the lunch of a set of flying teeth. The "slow-witted whiner" from Junes offered you a ride on his bike, and to hang out at Junes, and to clean up your vomit, and yet another ride on his bike, and his sympathy for your move, and maybe to keep talking to you after today. You might like a girl, and not the one who can fit in your pocket—more like _you_ could fit in _hers_.

You imagine telling your mother this, and almost laugh out loud. Yeah, _right_.

"Good," you say.

"You're meeting Narukami-san tomorrow after school," she says, and changes the channel. "Be prepared."

Scowling to yourself, you shut the bedroom door behind you. You do all of the homework that was due today, then all the homework due tomorrow, then tomorrow's work. Your mother turns off the TV and you hear her drifting into her own bedroom. You study until you feel woozy (probably more effects from your adventure inside the TV), then sneak a few more pieces of killer meat from Chie's bento and curl up in your futon with your stuffed bear. Your eyes shut just before midnight.

On the living room television, an image flickers out of sight.


	4. Yu Narukami

_LUNCH_

"Are you _studying_?" says Chie.

Yosuke leans right over your desk and examines your math work. You resist the urge to headbutt him out of your personal space, if only to keep from breaking your glasses. "Wait, this isn't what the first years are learning now," says Yosuke.

"It's what we will be learning three days from now," you explain. You dig through your bookbag and pull out the washed bento box. "Thank you for the food," you say.

"Of course!"

"Go back to the part where you're three days ahead in math," Yosuke interrupts. You pull out his washed uniform and hand that to him, too. "Oh, geez, you didn't have to. It wasn't the cleanest when I gave it to you anyway."

"Yosuke, that's _gross_. Actually, wait," says Chie. "Are you secretly a genius or something?"

"No, nothing like that! I just… like to study," you say sheepishly. Who doesn't like to do things they're good at?

"Yeesh," says Yosuke. "Yukiko better watch out; we have a new contender for top of the class. Wait, that's not right, she's not in your year…"

"She's number one right now?" you say in surprise.

"Has been for a while, on top of all the help she's doing at the inn," says Chie. "She's naturally gifted that way."

"And in a lot of other ways, too," says Yosuke, grinning. Chie smacks the back of his head. "I mean her face!"

"_An-y-way_," she says. "We checked out the TVs at Junes yesterday."

You sit up straighter. "You didn't go in, did you?"

"Couldn't put a finger through, let alone the rest of us." Yosuke sighs. "It might just be you, dude."

You can feel Chie looking at you with interest, and you feel suddenly self-conscious. You don't have any pencil smudges on your face, do you? "I-I wouldn't know about that," you say. "This never happened before I came to Inaba."

"Seriously, you should try it out again after school," says Yosuke. "We can hop over to Junes—"

"I have to meet with a tutor today."

Yosuke looks at you strangely. "Why would you need a tutor? You're already studying by yourself."

You shrug and say nothing. You've spoken too much about your mother as it is.

"Some other day, then," says Chie. She sits down in the desk next to you and begins opening another cup of instant noodles. "Until then, have you heard about the Midnight Channel, Adachi-kun?"

You frown as Yosuke settles into the desk in front of you and pulls out a paper bag. "Um… no? I—"

"Chie, don't be telling him weird stuff like that," Yosuke says. He leans over to you conspiratorially. "I tried it already. It doesn't work."

"Wait, I—"

"_I_ tried it, and I definitely saw someone! You just didn't do it on a rainy night," she says hotly. She turns to you. "The Midnight Channel is an urban legend that if you watch a blank TV screen at midnight while it's raining, you'll see your soulmate!"

"Cool?" you say, uncomfortably. "But…"

Yosuke rolls his eyes. "Sure, I saw someone too, but that's just some static, and seeing your own reflection on the screen—"

"Guys?" you say, and they stop. You look down. "Sorry, I—I need to study."

Chie frowns. "During lunch break?"

You wish you could disappear on the spot. You've never had to put your foot down like this.

"You're already three days ahead," Yosuke points out.

"It's usually more than a week," you mumble. "I'm behind because of the… you know. The TV thing."

"Wow. You sure you don't…" Yosuke begins, but trails off. "Well… okay." He stands, and a second later Chie slings her bag back on her shoulder. He looks at you awkwardly, and you sincerely wish he'd just leave. "…Later."

They walk out together, and you overhear Yosuke saying, "I've got your new 'Trial of the Dragon,' by the way; I'll bring it tomorrow…" You grip your pencil tightly and put your nose to the paper, but your concentration is shot for the rest of the period.

Damn.

_AFTER SCHOOL_

Your mother isn't home when you arrive. You toe your shoes off and sling your book bag on the couch, where it hits the remote control. You consider the TV, glance over your shoulder, then delicately press the power button.

Yukiko is on screen, fumbling her way through an interview about taking her mother's place as manager "only, um, uh, only temporarily." Geez, there's really nothing to do in this town except watch TV; you'd think they'd have a better news station considering. You sit on the couch and feel yourself unwind, keeping your finger on the power button. Just for ten minutes or so. Ten minutes won't hurt.

There's footsteps outside the door.

You hit the power button, throw the remote on the couch, snatch your bag, and bolt for your room. You shut your bedroom door as the front door opens; you hear your mother sigh as she walks in.

"Tohru?" she calls.

"Yes," you say.

"Studying hard?"

"Yes," you say.

"Dinner in an hour."

"Yes," you say.

In an hour, your mother sets down a plate of boiled cabbages with mayonnaise, miso on the side. She pops open a can of beer and smiles. "I would have made nimono," she says, "but we have to use up all those cabbages, don't we?"

Fuck. You _hate_ cabbages.

Both you and your mother stare down at your plates.

"Thank you for the meal," you say blandly.

Your mother picks up a piece with her chopsticks and grimaces. Your mother also hates cabbages.

Well. Whoever advised against drinking poison and waiting for your enemies to die was a pussy.

_EVENING_

"Pardon the intrusion," says Narukami. Again, he's still in his work clothes, but now he's carrying a backpack instead of gifts.

"Would you like anything to drink?" you mother says hopefully. "A juice box, Nanako-chan?"

Nanako hides behind Narukami's leg again, and he smiles. "Perhaps just water," he says, again. Your mother smiles and disappears into the kitchen, and Narukami's calm face turns towards you. You resist the irrational urge to sneer. "Would you like to study in your room?"

"Good idea," you say, and hold the door open.

Narukami, instead, takes the door and gestures for you to go first. The urge to sneer returns. "How are you doing in your science classes? I've heard the geography section right around now is hard for first-years," says Narukami.

"We're just learning about lakes right now," you say, dragging a desk to the middle of your bedroom. "That's not hard at all; it's only memorization—"

"Teddie!" Nanako exclaims.

_Shit_, you'd forgot to hide that. Nanako rushes to the corner of your room where your futon is folded and holds it up for Narukami (please _no_) to see. "Look, Big Bro, Adachi-san has a cute teddie bear!"

"That's not mine!" you say loudly. Nanako drops it in fright. Shit, _shit_. "I—no, that's not—sorry," you say, and mean it. You pick the bear up and, though it makes your skin crawl, offer it to her with an embarrassed smile. "I didn't mean to yell. Here."

She doesn't move.

"Didn't you buy a ribbon today that would look nice on him?" Narukami asks gently.

Nanako lights up again like he'd flipped a switch. "Oh! Yes!" she says, and sets the bear down on your table and begins tying a purple ribbon on your bear's ear. It's disgustingly pink. "There," she says, obviously delighted with her work. "Now Teddie is pretty!"

You stare at the ratty old thing, now with a girlish lopsided bow on the side of its frazzled head. You've never felt a stronger urge to throw that bear in the trash.

"Tohru," says your mother's voice, and you suppress a wince. Your mother looks at you severely from the doorway, and sets a tray of two water glasses on the table. "You shouldn't distract Narukami-san. He's taking the time to teach you."

Nanako shifts to hide the bear a little better. "Not a distraction, Adachi-san," Narukami says. "We were just getting started."

Your mother smiles. "Study hard," she tells you, and shuts the door again.

Nanako slides the bear out from behind her back, looking guilty. Narukami pats her head, seemingly on reflex. "Are you particularly good at memorization?" asks Narukami.

"What?" Oh, the lakes. You don't know why he's harping on it; straightforward memorization is the one thing you _are_ naturally gifted at. "Memorization isn't a problem. I'll get around to it, I guess."

"You haven't done it yet?"

"I'll do it eventually. Memorization isn't that big of a deal." You shrug, but it's hard with Nanako's fingers still on your bear. "I just don't really like lakes, is all."

Narukami seems amused, but hell if you can tell; the guy never moves his face. "A personal vendetta against lakes?"

"They're kind of gross," you explain. You dump your textbooks out of your bookbag, but Narukami doesn't move to do the same with his own backpack. "Like… when you think about it, it's just a bunch of water sitting still, not doing anything. Just fermenting in itself. You end up with all sorts of gross stuff growing in it, and it's not like it can wash itself clean, because there's no new water going in and no old water moving out."

"A lot of people think they're pretty," Narukami says mildly.

"On the surface," you say. "It's underneath where you've got all the bacteria and algae and dead fish floating around, and it never goes away. Just piles up and up underneath the surface." You frown. "Are these lakes even that important? It's only one quiz for science."

"Hm," says Narukami.

There's a silence. Quietly, Nanako removes the ribbon from the bear's ear and slides it across the empty desk. You stare at it. She stares at you. You stare at her. She puffs out her cheeks, looking embarrassed.

"I'm sorry for touching your bear. You can have Teddie back."

"I-It's… fine," you say. You reach across the desk (it feels like it got longer) to snatch it from the no-man's-land, and shove the bear in a desk drawer. Irrationally, you wish you had a lock to put on it.

"Won't Teddie be lonely in there?" she says curiously.

You suppress a grimace. You'd roll your eyes, but you used to say the same thing about the same bear when you were her age. "Well, he's… he's used to it," you say.

Nanako frowns. "That doesn't seem like a very nice thing to get used to."

Ugh, now she was making _you_ feel bad about this. You should have thrown that bear away years ago. You look at Narukami for a lifeline, but he doesn't seem very interested in his lakes anymore. "Um, shouldn't we start working?" you say. "I'm sure you have some homework to do, right, Nanako?"

"No, I finished all my work this afternoon," she says. "I just like to hang out with Big Bro."

"Dojima-san works late at the station, especially with the recent murders," Narukami explains. "I get off a little earlier than he does, though, because I'm not officially a detective. So I watch Nanako for him at night."

"Should I leave?" Nanako asks anxiously. "I can go back to the house…"

"No, no, I never said that!" you say. Oh god, you're not going to be responsible for making little girls cry. "I mean… if you go back, you'll be alone at the house, won't you?"

Nanako shrugs, staring at her knees. Narukami's hand tenses on the table.

You open your mouth—

"Hey, does that window have a screen?"

Bewildered, you turn to see Narukami looking straight at you. It's the clearest, most straightforward gaze you've ever had the misfortune to meet. "Wha—yeah, of course. Otherwise bugs would get in, wouldn't they?"

Narukami stands (with another pat on Nanako's head) and examines your bedroom window. "It comes out, though," he says.

"Probably? What are you—hey!"

"Whoops," says Narukami, looking down at the screen he'd just pulled out. "Nanako, wanna go for a field trip?"

"A _what_?" you say.

"It seems appropriate to learn about bodies of water by the Samegawa."

"Oh! That's a good idea!" says Nanako brightly.

"Are you guys trying to sneak out of my house," you say, "through my _window_?"

"Yeah," says Narukami.

"But—but w-we're on the second floor," you say. You glance at the door, but it doesn't seem like your mother has heard. "There i-isn't a tree or anything to climb down on, or a—"

Narukami unzips his backpack and pulls out a coiled rope.

"_What is that_."

"Big Bro is always prepared!" says Nanako.

"Just coincidence," says Narukami.

"What are you—_what are you doing_," you say frantically. Your mother is literally right on the other side of this door and she could walk in at any moment and see your tutor trying to climb down from your window like a wannabe ninja. "I—we don't have to go anywhere! We can sit here and—and learn about it from a book like normal people!"

"Hey, do you have anything to tie this rope to?"

"Um—no," you say, and it's actually true. "Yeah, so this is a bad idea! How about we not do it?"

"Your desk has to be at least a hundred pounds. How heavy are you?"

You stomach sinks. "Er… a hundred thirty?"

Narukami piles your textbooks, his backpack, and Nanako's backpack onto your desk. "With all this, plus Mr Teddie, I'm guessing at least a hundred sixty. Is that an appropriate counterweight? Do physics work that way?"

"_You're_ the tutor!"

"I'm a psych major. I never took physics."

"There is also a _door_," you say desperately. "That we can _walk out through._"

Narukami and Nanako look at you. "I guess so," says Nanako, slowly.

"Are you sure?" asks Narukami.

You suppress a deep breath. What does he mean, _are you sure there's a door_? "If it's a field trip then—sure. Yeah. Let's go."

"So we don't have to break the law and climb out the window?" asks Nanako.

"There's no law I know of against climbing out windows," says Narukami. "It's just generally not done."

"That's good! So I don't have to keep it a secret from Daddy?"

"You should keep it a secret from Dojima-san anyway."

"_Mom_," you say loudly, opening the bedroom door. "We're going out!"

She turns around sharply from the couch. The TV goes mute. "Where? Why?"

You glance back; Narukami is sliding the screen back into your window. "Field trip," you say nervously. "We're learning about, uh, rivers. In geography. So we're going to sample the Samegawa."

Her eyes narrow. "You don't need to do that."

"No," says Narukami from behind you. His backpack is magically packed and ready to go. "But I find it helps with a student's long term memory to connect the lesson with an experience. It's a good way to start off after a school transfer." He looks, suddenly, worried and apologetic; a good young man deferring to his elders. It's the most expression you've seen on his face ever. "It's worked well for a lot of other transfer students, but if you don't want Tohru-kun going out after the sun's down…"

"Oh, well," she says. "That sounds like a… wonderful teaching method."

"I like to go above and beyond when I can," says Narukami.

Your mother smiles. Her eyes are fixed on you. "Don't forget your cell phone. Be home within an hour. Study hard. Have you packed your bags?"

"It's better if he doesn't take notes for this," says Narukami, leading the way out of the house. "That way he'll _have _to remember what I said."

You feel your mother's eyes on you as you shut the door behind you.

"I didn't bring any food," says Nanako sadly, holding up a hand to feel the light drizzle as Narukami opens two umbrellas. "And I had a bag I'd prepared in the freezer…"

"Next time," says Narukami. He sets off at a pace just slow enough for Nanako and simultaneously drive you crazy. "Yosuke-kun still has some at his place, doesn't he? We could ask him to bring that tomorrow."

"Yosuke-kun?" you echo.

"Oh, do you know him?" asks Narukami, rather unnecessarily. "I suppose city kids would stick together. I help him with some assignments, but more often towards midterms and finals when he's panicking and regretting procrastinating and wondering why he can't find any of his old assignments in his nonexistent binder."

Nanako frowns. "But will he remember if you ask him to bring it?"

"I have faith he'll pull through for the things that count."

"Cat food isn't that important, Big Bro."

Narukami pantomimes a wound to the heart, Nanako giggles, and you decide you're going to make your mother fire this smug bastard. You're going to do it the instant you get back home. He's going to waste your whole night, and it'll be another night without having studied. You can't turn down Chie and Yosuke's offer of eating lunch together and have nothing to show for it-

"Nanako, what are the three largest lakes in Japan?" asks Narukami. You look at him sharply, and very seriously consider the possibilities of mind-readers.

She frowns. "Um… Biwa… Kasumigaura? …Ehh…"

"Adachi-kun?"

"Saroma," you say.

"Which regions?"

"Kansai, Kanto, Hokkaido."

"Any other lakes, Nanako?"

"Toya?"

"Region, Adachi-kun?"

"…Hokkaido?"

"One of my cousins went to Hokkaido for the birth of her niece," says Narukami with a sigh. "She never fails to remind us how much she wanted to see the lake there."

"I'd like to meet Kusawa-san someday," says Nanako.

"Ever been to Hokkaido, Adachi-kun?"

You shake your head. Your father might have, though you wouldn't really know.

"Take a guess, then. Do you think Toya's a particularly big lake, or is Nanako just remembering random information again?" asks Narukami.

You frown, looking up at the sky for an answer. It's so much clearer than the sky in the city, you realize.

"No, Big Bro, it's pretty big!" Nanako insists.

You shake those thoughts from your mind. "It's in the top ten, I know."

"Number nine," says Narukami. "Nanako, did you know Fujioka-san from Yasogami was from San'in? You wouldn't happen to know him, Adachi-kun? How about lakes from San'in?"

By the time you've gotten to the Samegawa, you've gone through the twenty largest lakes in Japan and their regions. "That was fun!" says Nanako.

"I hope so," says Narukami. "How about you, Adachi-kun?"

"It's better for studying to be efficient than fun," you say resolutely.

"Doesn't have to be one or the other," he says. "Oftentimes—"

"Big Bro! Do you have my ribbon?" Nanako asks, almost urgently.

Narukami pats his pockets and pulls out the pink ribbon she'd tied to your bear. She smiles with her whole face in the dim street light. Carefully, she takes the ribbon and advances towards a darkened tree, her small feet almost silent on the pavement; but as soon as her feet touch grass, the cat hiding in the shadows bolts away down the road. "_Geez_," she says, like the cat has been terribly rude, and Narukami chuckles. "Don't laugh," she complains. "I wanted to put a little poom-poom on top of her head."

"Like those really ugly shih tzu dogs?"

"Big Broooo," says Nanako.

Narukami laughs. "She's probably still on this road somewhere," he offers. "If you're calm enough, you might be able to find her."

Nanako totters down the road, further into shadow; Narukami's eyes never leave her. You swear you'll make your mother fire him and you'll never have to put up with this asshole again—the nerve of him, bringing his little sister with him and barely looking at you. Horrendous, _horrible_ work ethic, _terrible_ example set for the next generation. Gosh, you should feel fantastic right now, finding out that no matter how good he might be at smiling politely and working two jobs, he was just as lazy and unmotivated as everyone els—

You freeze.

"Nanako," you call in stage-whisper, unsure if you should raise your voice or lower it. "I found the cat!"

"Good eye," says Narukami.

The cat is a fluffy orange mess of dirt, leaves, and soft fur, with bony legs and a low belly from recent pregnancy. Her tongue is quick and pink as it flickers out between her teeth; you can see your reflection in her eyes as they turn to slits. "Oh! Oh, quick!" whispers Nanako excitedly. "See if you can catch her!"

For just a moment, you hesitate. Cats are fickle, proud, solitary creatures, and you've never liked how they don't like you. Always acting like they're too good for you, or you're not good enough for them. Darting away whenever you reached out, demanding your attention when it suited them, indecipherable in their wants and needs. They were, in your opinion, the worst idea for a household pet—high maintenance, impossible to understand, and utterly selfish.

The cat darts into the bushes.

"Aw, Adachi-san," says Nanako. "You didn't even try."

"Why would I, if I knew the cat wouldn't come?" you say. She doesn't look any less disappointed, though, and you wince. "Er, maybe if we had some food? Stray cats always like to be fed."

"If Yosuke-kun remembers," says Narukami, amused, and clicks his tongue. The cat immediately pokes her head back out of the bush, and Narukami holds out his umbrella as if in offering. You stare, jaw slack, as the cat trots towards Narukami's extended hand and sniffs it. "I really don't know if there's enough fur without knots to put any bow-tie in," he says, absently tucking the cat's tail in under the umbrella's cover.

"How did you _do_ that?" you ask.

Narukami tilts his head. "I guess," he says, "she wants a familiar place to feel safe."

_EARLY MORNING_

You drag your toothbrush against your teeth. Biwa, in Kansai. Kasumigaura, in Kanto. Saroma, in Hokkaido. Inawashiro, in Tohoku. Nakaumi, in San'in. Hussharo, in Hokkaido…

You forget to tell your mother to fire Narukami.

_ AFTER SCHOOL_

"I'm really sorry about this, Adachi-kun," says Narukami. His voice is muffled and rushed over the phone, and you think you can hear somebody shouting his name in the background. "Things got really hectic today at work, and I don't think I can make your tutoring session today. Unless you don't mind pushing it back until-" The voice gets louder in the background, and Narukami covers the receiver to reply. "-until some ungodly early morning hour, which I assume you do," he continues.

"That's... fine," you say. It is certainly not fine; your math teacher just went over a concept you've never seen before and you're not intending to get anything less than a perfect on tonight's math assignment. "Tomorrow, then?"

Narukami hesitates. "You've seen the news about the murder of Mayumi Yamano and Misuzu Hiiragi, haven't you?" he says slowly.

"I think everyone has in this town," you say. "They don't show anything else except news reports about the Amagi Inn's new manager."

"Until this whole affair is resolved, I'm likely to be working overtime most of the week," says Narukami, "I hope you understand; Inaba is not usually this... excited, and I'm not usually this busy."

"But I thought the news said that the police had a suspect," you say, confused.

"Figuring out 'whodunnit' is sometimes the easy part. Especially with new incidents popping up," he sighs. "I'll get back to you on tomorrow. If there's a problem you really can't figure out, send it to me through email and I'll see what I can do."

Placated, you tell him thanks and leave him to the mercy of whoever had been yelling down his ear. To be honest, you can't imagine how mind-numbingly dull Inaba would be without these murders. You wouldn't have minded seeing the corpse hung upside down, at least to have the memory to mull over when you're bored. You've heard there weren't even any wounds. Besides, ever since you threw up over dissecting a frog in biology last year, you've gotten way better at keeping it down. Right?

You take a new route home to avoid Yosuke, who's standing by his bike looking thoroughly confused at nothing. You wonder, briefly, where Chie is. Aren't she and Yosuke always seen together? Chie had lent him a DVD and everything. Shit, maybe they're… an item? Wouldn't you have heard about something like that if they were, though? And they don't act like they're dating at all; they act like unruly siblings, if anything. And even more than Yosuke, doesn't Chie hang out with-

"Adachi-kun!"

You almost drop your bag, and when you turn to see Yukiko in a pink kimono waving at you from the side of the Samegawa, you almost drop your bag again. Geez, Yukko is _cute_. What's she doing, trying to talk to you?

"Sorry to bother you," she says, worrying her lower lip and scraping off lipstick. "I-sorry. You _are_ the underclassman I saw with Chie the other day, right?"

"Er-yes," you say.

"Have you seen Chie today?" she says quickly.

"N-No, I haven't..."

Yukiko purses her lips. "Do you have any idea where she might be?"

"No, I-why?"

Yukiko turns in a circle, like she wants to pace but can't in her kimono and wooden shoes. "Do you-no, that's silly," she mumbles. "Sorry to bother you. I know I must seem crazy, coming out here in my work clothes."

"No, the-the clothes are okay. They look good on you," you say. You congratulate yourself on getting through that sentence without stuttering. "And I promise I won't laugh at whatever it is. I've seen some pretty weird things myself lately," you say, and clear your throat to hide your laugh.

Yukiko considers you carefully. You resist the urge to hide, or look away, but she sighs first and asks, "Have you heard of the Midnight Channel?"

Okay, that _is_ pretty silly, but you stick to your word and don't laugh. "Uh, Chie told me about it."

"I was up late cleaning a suite of ours and... well, I was in a room alone with a TV turned off on a rainy night, and..." She swallows hard. "I saw Chie on the Midnight Channel."

"You saw _Chie_?" you repeat, astounded. "Wait-Chie's your soulmate?!"

"It wasn't like Chie described!" says Yukiko. "She said it was a faint, blurry image in static-but this was like looking at a kung-fu movie, starring Chie. And I would know if Chie had ever been in a kung-fu movie. And she talked _to me_," she says, even more urgently. "She said she was going to find somebody new to save."

"...What does that have to do with you?" you ask.

Yukiko blushes and waves her hands. "A-Anyway, I was looking for her all today, and I called her phone and her home phone and I even _went _to her house on my break, and Yosuke-kun hasn't seen her and neither has Kou-kun, her teachers marked her absent, and-it's impossible to just _disappear_ in a small town like Inaba," she says. "Someone will have seen you and told someone who told someone."

"Is she out of town?"

"She would have told me something like that!" insists Yukiko. You realize with panic that Yukiko's eyes are shining just a little too brightly. "I-I mean... she's my best friend! She would!"

"P-Please calm down, Senpai," you stammer. Shit, what do you _do_? "Um... would you like to sit down? I don't have any water, but we could buy some at the shopping district?"

She shakes her head. "Thank you, but I'm-I'll be fine," she sighs. "I'm so sorry, Adachi-kun. I didn't mean to throw all this at you."

"It's okay," you say on reflex. "I mean-have you told the police?"

She nods. "I'm lucky the person who picked up the call believed me even though she hasn't been missing for twenty-four hours."

Then it clicks: Chie is missing, not even a week after the murder of another woman in Inaba. Narukami cancelling last-minute and the police working overtime—possibly on a search for Chie. Yukiko saw her on TV on a mysterious Midnight Channel-or did she see her _in_ the TV?

"Adachi-kun?" Yukiko says. "Adachi-kun, your expression..."

You shake your head. "Sorry, what?"

She stares at you for a long second. "...Did you remember something? Where Chie is?"

"Nope!" you say quickly. "Nope, nothing! I'll, uh, let you know if I see her. Do you need help going back to the inn?"

"No, I'm fine," she says. "Are you in a rush to go somewhere? I haven't held you up, have I?"

"I'm not going anywhere important," you say, and smile nervously. "Just... thought I'd drop by to see Yosuke-senpai. At Junes."

You have one hand in the Junes TV when somebody screams, you startle and lose your grip on the TV edge, and somebody slams into you from behind and you _both_ tumble through.

You hit the ground hard, narrowly missing the stack of TVs in the middle of the target, and blink away the stars in your vision. Geez, you landed right on your bookbag. Nothing better be broken in there; you like all those pencils...

"Adachi-kun?"

You blink. You really, really wish you didn't know exactly who that voice belonged to.

"...Yukiko-senpai?"


	5. Yukiko Amagi

_AFTER SCHOOL _

"Yosuke-kun doesn't work today," Yukiko explains. "So when you said you were going to visit Yosuke-kun, even though you're his friend and you should know that, it was just so suspicious, I had to follow you to Junes..."

"Please go back, Senpai," you say through gritted teeth. And you've only met Yosuke like, twice.

"I certainly can't now! This is where Chie is, isn't it? Wherever…" She carefully holds your gaze like she'd rather look at you than the fog. "…Wherever this is…"

You take a deep breath. "Yes, but it's also very dangerous here. Please go back."

She wavers. Then: "So Chie is in danger here, isn't she? And all the more reason to stay with you, isn't it? This way, we can protect each other until we find Chie. It's the most logical solution, since we both want to rescue Chie."

You take another deep breath. Yukiko looks at you oddly. "You said yourself that it's not safe to be here alone," she says, even more clearly. You wish she didn't look so much like she was waiting for you to concede the point, as if she has nothing to concede herself.

"It's only a hunch that she's here," you say instead. "I came to check, but... with all this fog, and all these walkways to choose from, I don't have a lot of ways to find her. Looks like a dead end. We should head back." You shrug in the best physical representation of "oh well" as you know how. Maybe you'll come back later, when Yukiko isn't around.

Instead of agreeing, Yukiko squints unattractively. You wish she wouldn't do that. "Then what's that?" she says, pointing somewhere over your shoulder. You can see a yellowish glint somewhere in the fog; you stand and advance to see a goopy black substance in the vague shape of a footprint, glowing yellow tinge sliding through the shadowy liquid.

You suppress a shudder. "That wasn't here before," you mumble.

"What do you think made it?"

You shrug, before you remember the teeth. Wait, the flying teeth didn't have feet, so that probably means there's other _types_ of monsters—

"Do you think Chie is that way?" Yukiko says.

"It's the only lead we've got, but—"

"Then we should hurry," says Yukiko. Her dark eyes are narrowed with determination, and she kicks off her wooden shoes to stand, somehow, taller without them. "Come on, Adachi-kun!"

"Wait! There's-"

"Please tell me on the way!"

It turns out that Yukiko's legs are longer than yours and she has a natural talent for speed-walking, and you find yourself outpaced by a girl with an obi crushing her ribs and both hands hitching up her kimono. Jesus, what is this girl _not_ good at? "There's more footprints up ahead!" she calls back.

"Senpai!" you say. "_Please_ hold up! There's—I told you, it's dangerous here, you'll start feeling sick after a while and there's weird creatures—and it's very likely whoever threw Chie in is here with her—" Yukiko stops, and you grunt as you smack right into her back. "Ugh… Senpai?"

She whirls around, but though her eyes are wide her expression is as blank as snow. "Creatures? Someone threw Chie in?"

If she'd just _listened the first time_- "Senpai, you _have_ to listen to me," you say, trying not to sound like you're speaking to a dim-witted animal, because you're not, you know that, you just have to resist the urge. "I have no idea what this place is, but the first time I came in here, I felt like I was going to throw up afterwards and I saw honest-to-god monsters in here. Jaws large enough to fit my whole body," you say. Her expression doesn't change. "I talked with Yosuke-senpai and Chie-senpai about it—that's how I know them, because they saw me come out of a TV by accident—I went into the TV by accident too, I promise—and they think that this place is dangerous enough that if you push someone in, you could kill someone by trapping them here. We think this is how the news reporter and enka singer died."

"And now Chie is here," says Yukiko flatly.

"It's really dangerous here and I didn't mean to go rushing off to save Chie," you say. Well, you sort of did, it'd be fantastic if you could save the day like a full-on action hero, but you've got math to do tonight and you don't want to die, either. "I just wanted to confirm a hunch."

She folds her hands tightly. "I see," she says, slowly. "I apologize. I should have listened to what you had to say instead of rushing off without all the information. It's much too dangerous here…"

You sigh in relief.

"…to go in without weapons."

Okay, things are getting a _little_ too real.

"L-Let's not get ahead of ourselves!" you exclaim. "I mean, where w-would we even _get_ weapons? And we can't fight against the headache this place gives you—"

Yukiko towers over you. The whites of her eyes glow in the dull fog. "If you don't want to rescue Chie," Yukiko declares, "you can leave."

You swallow. You mean to say that maybe you'll do just that, but your throat only clicks dryly. Yukiko doesn't blink at all. "W-Well, you can't get back in if I don't help you," you plead. "Yosuke-senpai and Chie-senpai tried, and I'm the only one who can get through the TVs."

"Then I won't leave," she says.

"But then you won't have any weapo—"

"I don't think you understand," she says, and now her pink lips are a jagged line through her face and her large eyes glitter like broken glass. "I don't know how you know Chie, or why you want to help her, but Chie is my _friend_, and even if I didn't have a responsibility to her as her friend and basic member of society, I _need_ her. I'm sorry, Adachi-kun, but I will find her with or without your help."

"I-I," you stammer. "Um, you… Chie-senpai…"

She holds out her hand. "So are you with me, Adachi-kun?"

"What?" you say, faintly.

"Will you take responsibility for your friends? For the decisions you make?" says Yukiko. "Will you see this matter through to the end with me?"

Her delicate fingers tremble in the space between you. Hesitantly, but without any thought at all, you take her fine-boned hand in yours.

"Promise me," she says.

"I promise," you reply.

She sighs in relief, and her smooth skin slides out of your grasp. She looks out into the fog, hands still shaking. You think that maybe the tremble in her delicate hands should be cute, but you can't forget the strong set of her mouth; nothing has seemed more grotesque than such a massive lie, but you can't decide which one it is.

* * *

"We are going _today_," says Yukiko. She strides with purpose down the shopping district, then stops and chews on her bottom lip again. "I-I mean, if that's okay with you. If you don't have anything else to do today. I just assumed you didn't because you went in the TV first…"

"My tutor cancelled. I'll… tell my mother I'm at the library for a project," you mumble. Vaguely, the thought arises that you may legitimately _die_ within the afternoon. No, the TV world is mostly empty. You probably won't see anything for hours. It'll be a nice, peaceful walk free from school, homework, and people. It'll be okay. It'll be okay.

"Um, let me make this call." Yukiko reaches for her phone under her—_time to look somewhere else_. "I'll ask Kasai-san to take over the inn's management for this afternoon…"

"And do you just. Um," you say. "Happen to have weapons lying around in your inn, too?"

"Yes, lots."

You sputter.

"Actually, I suppose they're blunted for decoration…" Yukiko frowns. "But this one time a really drunk customer took one down from the wall and started swinging it around and the cuts afterwards looked pretty real—oh, sorry, I guess I shouldn't be saying these things…"

You sputter some more.

"Are you okay, Adachi-kun?" says Yukiko, peering at your face worriedly. "Do you have a cold? You seem to be having problems with your throat…"

"I'm fine!" you manage. "I'm super fine!"

"…If you say so."

Thankfully, you don't see anyone walking down the deserted shopping district with the most popular girl in school wearing a pink kimono—except one elderly lady, who Yukiko waved to and introduced as Tatsumi-san. "She and her son supply a lot of our cloths, so she's seen me dressed this way before," she says, which does nothing to address the concern of _you_ being seen with her. "I think her son is in your grade, too? I haven't spoken with him in a while…"

"What's his name?" you ask, to be polite.

"Kanji Tatsumi. Though, I don't even know if he attends school anymore… he might have skipped too often…"

You stop asking questions. That's nobody you want to associate with.

The Amagi Inn is, on the other hand, a respectable establishment. Old enough to be more traditional than outdated, clean and spacious, and filled with people who don't ask questions. "Oh, probably the storage room in the back," says a maid, which takes you and Yukiko to a room full of _weapons_.

She ends up handing you a pair of kama. "Or would you prefer a katana?" she asks. "Those are kind of heavy, though, and they can be kind of a responsibility to keep…"

"Ah, I'll pass," you say. Responsibility? Getting right up close to a monster with claws and blood? No thanks. "How about anything you can throw?"

"I don't want to lose any of our shuriken," she says firmly. "You seem like you'd fight well with kunai, but all our kunai are on display, so…" She holds up a pair of kama. "Like I said before, how about these?"

Farming equipment. Of course a little hick town inn would have those. "Senpai, do you have anything that… I dunno, shoots stuff?"

"Like a rifle?" She looks you up and down, then meets your eyes again. "…Um, no. And decorative rifles are unwieldy, and regular guns needs licenses, and… please take the kama, Adachi-kun."

You take them, feeling a little smaller in Yukiko's eyes.

"And I'll take a fan. My mother used to teach me how to use these—mostly for show, but now…" She takes a deep breath. "Let me get changed. I can barely move in this."

Which is how you ended up outside her room, avoiding the eyes of passing maids, trying to look like you aren't holding weapons. "I really think I should wait in the lobby, Senpai," you say hesitantly.

"I'll be just a second!" she says. Does she think you'll run away if she doesn't keep you on the shortest leash possible? You really just wanted to watch the TV. The lobby has a really nice flatscreen there; you wonder if it goes to the same place in the TV world, but from your experience with your TV and Junes' TV, you're going to bet it doesn't.

"Yukiko-senpai, if you don't mind me asking," you say, "why do you want to rescue Chie-senpai so badly?"

It takes you about a second and a half to realize what you've said. You just made yourself look like an asshole by questioning these sorts of wholesome, justice-for-all pursuits—which is really not what you meant, although you sort of did, because you like Chie a lot, but you don't know if you want to _die_ for her. "I-I mean, we could try to talk to the police about this," you say quickly. "Somebody will believe us if we show them proof, right?"

"But if I'm right, it would take at least a week for them to even start," Yukiko says through the door. You can hear fabric rustling inside. "There'd be way too much disbelief and shock and confusion to mobilize a large number of people like that, and Chie might not even have until tomorrow. We have to rescue her now."

"O-Oh… I guess that's true." But that's not what you meant, either.

Yukiko steps out of the inn's changing room, back in her red school uniform. "I know this uniform isn't really common," she says, "but Chie says red looks good on me. I sort of ended up with a lot of red clothes, and even dishes and stuffed animals… It's sort of become my favorite color."

"Chie-senpai's right. It looks really good," you say, and try for an awkward smile.

She smiles back too, and looks back at the mirror with a blush. "I can't remember if I had a favorite color before red," she says softly.

* * *

When you get back to the TV world, you realize you've left your bookbag lying on the floor. "I can't believe I forgot this," you mumble, checking to see if all your papers are still there (which they are, thank god).

"We can come back for it when we've found Chie," Yukiko says. "If you just leave it by these TVs, then it'll be okay, right?"

Your fingers tighten on the handle. The time you're giving up to play hero with farming equipment won't be here when you get back, though. You have math to do, and you were going to email Narukami about any questions you had… and you actually _do_ have a project to do, and you really should have been doing that in the library like you told your mother. It's not enough to be second-best, let alone not even in the top ten. If you don't get perfect grades, what then? It's not like you're not good at anything el—

"Ah, I have this quiz on lakes tomorrow," you say truthfully. "I went over them with my tutor, but I'm still worried."

"If you studied them with your tutor, shouldn't you be alright?"

"I usually study a lot more than that."

"Oh." Yukiko looks confused. "I guess so… Who's your tutor?"

You scratch the back of your neck. "Narukami-sensei. Do you know him?"

"I think everyone knows him. He tutors Yosuke sometimes, and Chie too." She shrugs. "I haven't really talked to him... A couple of hours of studying is good enough for me."

_A couple of hours_, you think derisively, and she's the top of her class. There's nothing that life hasn't handed to this girl on a silver platter—looks, fame, wealth, a paying job after high school, and even brains.

"Adachi-kun?" asks Yukiko. "…Are you alright?"

"What? O-Oh, I'm fine!" you say, with a nervous laugh. "Nothing, just thinking about something. Let's go. Quicker we start, the quicker we finish, right?"

Yukiko grips her fans tight. "The quicker we find Chie."

There's a perfect trail of black and yellow smudges all the way down various walkways, and you and Yukiko follow the path in silence. You imagine slime, slowly losing its essence with every step—or a snake, shedding parts of its own skin to keep moving forward. Oh god, what happens when you _find_ the monster? You'd have to fight it, right? Would you have to fight it _for_ Chie? (You'd think that Chie would have fought it herself by then.)

But if a monster took Chie, then how'd she get here in the first place? And if Yosuke and Chie couldn't get in the TV by themselves, then somebody who _could_ must have put her through… right? Somebody from your world? Somebody like you?

"I think that's it," says Yukiko suddenly, pointing at a tall shadow. "I can't really see because of the fog, but…"

Yukiko breaks out in to a jog; you lug your farm tools after her as fast as you can, which isn't very. The smudges lead you to a set of wooden doors; you look around, but you can't see far enough through the fog to see what kind of building this is. "Do you think this is where Chie is?" Yukiko asks. "Or do you think she was only taken through here?"

You grimace; you're already feeling nauseous, and you haven't even had to deal with defending yourself. "Uhh, let's hope this is the end of the yellow brick road," you say. "It'd be kind of anticlimactic if she wasn't, huh?"

"Anticlimactic…" repeats Yukiko. "Yes, I suppose so. Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," you laugh nervously. She doesn't laugh with you, and pulls open the doors.

And Chie is on the other side.

"Senpai!" you call, relieved. Wow, you didn't even have to fight anything! Now you guys can all go back to real life, nobody dies, you can talk with Chie again during lunch, maybe, if you aren't studying—

Chie turns around, grinning widely. She's wearing what looks like martial arts training uniform, for some reason; and there's something strange about her eyes, you think in the back of your head, but you can't see well enough through the fog to place it. And then:

"_ANOTHER CHALLENGER! ARE YOU HERE TO STEAL THE PRINCESS_?!" she shouts.

Yukiko covers her ears. Distantly, you hear your own kama hit the floor.

"_You'll never take the princess while I'm here! Because_— " Chie kicked a punching bag _off its chain_ into the wall, ran _up_ the wall, flipped, landed on a conveniently-placed horizontal bar, flipped off _that_, did a scissor kick in midair and struck a pose. "_You'll never get past me!_"

"Wh—" you say.

"_I've trained my whole life to serve the princess! I can't fail here!_"

"You—"

"_What's that?_" she shouts. "_My princess is requesting me! I vow to take you down another day! Upon my honor!_"

And Chie turned on her heel (_cracking_ the wooden floor) and ran, dodging swinging punching bags and cheesy ceremonial banners, then kicked the wooden door _off its hinges_ and disappeared into the fog.

"Wait—_what_—"

"Adachi-kun! Look!" says Yukiko, uncovering her ears. Through the crack Chie had left in the floor, black goop seeped through, pulling free and taking shape. Your spine turns cold; your palms begin to sweat. Slowly, you can see a sphere, a face, bright colors and lips… _Everything happens so much so fast_, you think vaguely. You've entered a madhouse.

"Is that a mon—"

"Run!" you yell, and sprint after Chie.

"Adachi-kun! If there's more monsters here we should learn how to—"

"Nope!"

"Adachi-kun!" she says again, sounding frustrated.

"I'm not getting eaten!"

You run through the next room, smack into a swinging screen that looks straight out of a martial arts movie, accidentally knock over a bucket of umbrellas (what's that doing here?), and take a left into another room filled with _swinging blades_. You skip to a stop and swear under your breath until you realize Yukiko is right behind you, shutting the door safely.

"Adachi-kun, please don't run off like that!" she pants. "It's not safe to be here alone!"

"It's not safe to be here at all!" you exclaim. Your hands are shaking even with them clenched hard into fists; you've never felt so out of control. "What _is_ this place? Why was Chie yelling like that?"

"Maybe this place affected her because she was here for so long?" she offers hesitantly. "I don't know anything more than you do. But… I don't know if I think that was the real Chie. It felt like a… fake image?"

You look at her oddly. "What? Why do you say that? Because you've been friends with her longer?" As if 'being friends' gives you a superhuman connection with someone—you _have_ to call bullshit on that.

"Well," she says, "maybe the fact that her words weren't matching up with her lip movements?"

You stop. Try to get your breathing under control. Think back.

"Yukiko-senpai… you mean like…"

"…a dubbed martial arts movie," she finishes. "I mean, doesn't this whole place look kind of like a cross between a dojo and a low-budget Chinese palace?"

You frown. The Chinese ceremonial posters glitter with fake gold; you're almost certain you've seen the umbrellas you knocked over in a Jackie Chan movie. Shit, how did you not notice that? Aren't you supposed to be smart? "Okay, but," you say, like you don't believe her except you do, but you can't admit that, "why a martial arts movie?"

"Chie loves them," says Yukiko. She's looking at you strangely again. "It's usually all she can talk about, especially recently, with the sequel to 'Trial of the Dragon' out… She didn't mention?"

"Er—no, she didn't…" You look away, like you've been caught lying. Have you? "I haven't really known her for that long…"

"I guess you… did just transfer here."

The two of you sit in silence for a moment, though you can hear tinny faux-Chinese music in the background and the swishing of shitty blades swinging from the ceiling that, presumably, some B-grade martial arts actor will have a fight scene through. Man, this place can't give you a break. You try your best to block it out until it's almost peaceful—if you can look away from Yukiko. Who's holding out your kama to you.

"You dropped this," she says.

You don't move.

"I don't know if I can do this alone, Adachi-kun," Yukiko says softly.

Geez—and that's why you promised her, yeah, you know. Why'd you have to go and do that? Now you've made this shitty contract and you can't go back on your word without looking stupid. You should be sensible about this; you can't _die_ for the sake of saving face.

"_Please_," she says.

"I—I don't _know_," you complain. "Please, just, leave me alone for a second, okay?"

"Adachi-kun—"

"Senpaiiii," you whine.

"But we're so close, we saw Chie _right there_—"

"I don't want to _die_, Senpai," you say at last. She must understand this, at least?

Her face crumples. "I don't want _Chie_ to die."

"Let's contact the police, then!" Your hands are shaking again, and you look away. "Let's leave it to the adults—"

"Adachi-kun, if there's anything that being manager of the Amagi Inn has taught me, it's that adults are just better at improvisation and saving face," she says coldly. You stare at her, and she flushes and drops her eyes. "A-And the police won't be able to—"

"—do it quickly enough, you've said," you say sourly.

"It's true!"

"But it's better than risking my life here! We have no idea what's going on; we're in way over our heads! Don't you get that? We could _die_ here; those things back there were ready to eat us! We're _both _just as likely to end up hanging from a telephone pole as the enka singer or news reporter or Chie-senpai!"

"Chie is my _best friend_!"

"So you'll risk your life for her?!"

"I have to!" she cries! "You don't understand!"

"No, I don't!" You scramble to your feet, and though you're standing far over Yukiko's head, you're also backing away. "Chie-senpai's not going to get you the things you want in life! She's not going to get you a job or a husband or a paycheck! Whatever they are, Chie-senpai can't fulfill your hopes and dreams, unless your hopes and dreams are so small that all you want to do is hang out with high school friends for the rest of your life!" you say, except that you're shouting now, or maybe hyperventilating at the same time. Yukiko stares at you in wide-eyed shock, but you can't seem to stop. "She's not the end-all, be-all of your life! You'll grieve for days and cry at her funeral and it'll suck and maybe it'll keep sucking for the rest of your life whenever you see a martial arts movie or green sports jackets, but life will go on without her and it's really not _that important_!"

"_He's right, you know._"

Neither of you move. Mostly, you stare at Yukiko, most of your angry tirade sucked into shock; she looks down at herself as if checking if she could have said it on—what, on accident? She stutters: "I-I—"

"_Oh, please, Adachi-kun, help me! I absolutely _need_ Chie back, you don't understand! God,_" says Yukiko's voice, "_can you _hear_ yourself? How twisted your own logic is?_"

The fog parts, and Yukiko steps through—but Yukiko is sitting on the floor looking like she wants to cling to your pant leg, which you hope she doesn't because you're two seconds from bolting for it. "_I can't do this by myself_," the fog-Yukiko mimics, and laughs, high and mocking. The way she looks down her nose at you makes you feel like she's sitting on a throne. "_I need Chie back so—what? So I can cling to _her_, instead?_"

"S-Stop that!" Yukiko cries. She doesn't stand up, only shrinks away. "What are you?!"

"_I'm you, clearly,_" says the thing that looks like Yukiko. "_Don't you see? I even know all the right things to say to guests at the inn: Please enjoy your meal! How many people are staying with you? Hot spring hours are open now! Please come again! Please take me with you from this horrid inn! Oh, no,"_ it says, and frowns. "_Was I not supposed to say that?_"

"I never-!"

"—_thought that? Because I know I have, and I'm you_," it interrupts. "_Because more and more, lately, you've been realizing—Chie _can't_ help you, can she? You can throw yourself at her and make yourself her princess, but you can't make her your prince._"

"Yukiko-senpai, what's going on? What are you doing?!" Shit, shit, you sound like you're on the verge of crying.

Yukiko opens her mouth, but: "_Nothing, that's what,_" interrupts the other. "_Oh, no, I didn't ask to be born here! I didn't ask to die here! I didn't ask for every step in between to be managed like an employee sign-in sheet! Boo-hoo," _says the fog-Yukiko, scowling._ "And what are you doing about it? Clinging to Adachi-kun, your _kouhai_, just _begging_ him to bring Chie back to you so you can cling to _her_, instead!_

_"And I think you and I both know, out of all this bullshit, what the absolute worst part is, don't we?" _says the fog-Yukiko, and she leans forward to smile with sickly yellow eyes. "_He's right: she can't save you _anyway_."_

"Stop!" Yukiko cries, her head in her hands. "Stop it, you're wrong! I don't feel like that! I don't know what you're talking about! You're not me!" The other Yukiko begins to laugh, your words catch in your throat, and Yukiko shrieks: "_You're not me_!"

"_You're right_," says the fog-Yukiko quietly, and laughs, louder and louder until you've clapped your hands over your ears. "_I'm _me_, now! And I'm going to find a new prince and leave you here to _rot_!"_

She swells, shadows oozing from her and drawing near, until a gust knocks both you and Yukiko off your feet. Your head throbs and your vision spins; and when you can see what little you can in the fog, you see a giant red bird crowing from a birdcage that swings from the ceiling. You scream.

"_I am a shadow,_" intones the bird, "_the true self! Prove to me that you can be my prince!_"

"Senpai!" you shout, and shake Yukiko's shoulder roughly. She doesn't move, her half-lidded eyes rolled upward. Shit, _shit_. The monster crows and shrieks with laughter, spreading its wings wide with terrible joy to knock the swinging blades clean off their chains, and you think you can see smoke seeping from her feathers. You sling Yukiko's arm over your shoulder and haul ass to the door, only to find the handle won't turn. You dump Yukiko on the ground (sorry but not really) and ram your shoulder into it; it holds firm. You pick up one of the kama and swing the blade tip-first into the wood.

"_Don't you dare!_"

You spin around in time to see _fire_ in your face; you shriek again and throw yourself to the ground. The fire explodes over your head. You can smell your own hair burning.

"_I won't let you run,_" the bird screams. "_If you won't be my prince, I'll pulverize you myself!_"

The birdcage swings lower, almost skimming the ground, and the bird rears back her head and stretches her wings wide. You leap over Yukiko's body and dodge along the wall but there's nowhere to go; you feel fire inches from your back. Your blood is pounding in your ears. You can't think; you can't think at all. You're going to die. You never finished anything that mattered; not your perfect records, or becoming number one in your class, or complying with your mother's insistence on grades, or the cabbages you'd bought for her, or coming out to the sticks for no good reason. You'll hang from a telephone pole tomorrow, and Narukami will never solve your case. Your homework will stay undone by the televisions. Your mother will cry over all the work she put into you and didn't get back. You just wanted to eat good food instead of boiled cabbages. Teddie will stay locked in his desk drawer. You wanted to feed and maybe hug Narukami's cats, just once; you wondered what a hug from Chie would feel like but never got one; you never rode on Yosuke's bike—

"PERSONA!" is what comes out of your mouth. _What the fuck?_ is what you think, and then it feels like your head has been split in half, your skull has shattered and your brain is drying in the open air; your fingers are in your hair trying to keep your head together and it won't stop and your gut is burning and your lungs are crawling through your ribs and your throat hurts and the enka singer is screaming in your ears—

* * *

_Igor looks out the submarine windows at the silent water, shakes his head, and sighs. Margaret closes the compendium and her eyes. A small, crumpled paper lies on Igor's table, feathery light and ghostly thin and bearing your name in dark, dark ink. _

_"Oh, dear."_

* * *

"—chi-kun? Can you hear me? Please open your eyes!"

The first thing you see is Yukiko's face hovering above yours. Your head hurts, a lot now, and you groan. She smiles in such relief you think tears might spill from her eyes. "Thank goodness you're okay."

"Please define okay," you whine.

She gives you an exasperated sigh, but her mouth is smiling all the same. "Do you know what happened?" she asks.

"Uhhh," you say, holding your head. It's still ringing, like a gong vibrating after the sound has died. "I know what happened, but… I have no idea what _happened_-" You sit bolt upright. "The giant bird!"

"The what?"

"The thing that's shooting fire and trying to kill us and..." You trail away as Yukiko frowns. You glance around, see your vision blur, rub your eyes, and try again. "Her," you say, in accusation, and point. The crumpled heap of the fog-Yukiko lies motionless on the ground, her back to you and face covered by silky black hair. "She turned into a... a monster," you say quietly, "and you fainted. She was a giant bird in a cage."

Yukiko, abruptly, flushes hard. "A bird in a cage," she echoes. "A monster..."

"What was that thing? Where'd it come from?" you mumble, and Yukiko looks away; but not before you see pain in her eyes, and you can't help looking down to see if there's blood. She's covered in the red of her uniform, but no blood. Only the fog-Yukiko sprawled across the floor.

Oh, you realize. Of course. There's nothing that hits harder than the truth.

Your head pounds. You can't think, you don't know what to say. Biwa, Kasumigaura, Saroma, Inawashiro? You can hear the fog-Yukiko breathing, smooth and gentle; Yukiko doesn't seem to be breathing at all.

"I was really hoping you had a gun I could use," you say, then clap your hands over your mouth.

She stares at you, then away again. "I... I know. I saw," she says. "That's why I didn't give you one."

"Oh, er, good. You know what I mean, then? I just... I told you there was crazy stuff in here. It would have been useful, right? Considering the, uh, bird," you say as if it's a joke. She winces, but it looks a bit like a smile. "I know it's pretty bad," you babble, "but I always thought guns were super cool. It's so violent, I know, you're not supposed to like them, but I always stare when I see movies with guns in them. One pull of a finger and you can make so much happen. I can't help what my brain thinks." You shrug helplessly. "I mean, isn't everyone like that?"

Yukiko looks down at her folded hands, and for the first time, you recognize the emotion in her as despair. "Monsters?" she whispers.

"I don't know!" you say, throwing your hands up in exasperation. "Maybe everyone _is_ full of shit! Maybe that thing _is_ you. I'd be entirely unsurprised. Don't look at me. Is it?"

Her bottom lip trembles.

"Is it?" you repeat.

Her teeth latch on hard to her lip. "Chie," she says, "is my friend."

You say nothing.

"Maybe our friendship isn't founded on purity," Yukiko says, desperately, "but I'm still her friend! It's okay to like someone out of your own weakness, isn't it?! It doesn't change that I like her, even if I also need her. It doesn't change that she can make me laugh after a bad day and I'll watch her terrible kung-fu movies with her. It doesn't change the times she's helped me during the inn's busy season and the beef bowl challenges we've done and our shared umbrellas on rainy days and the sleepovers we had as children, does it?!"

You recoil on reflex and her face crumples. You want to grab her and stop her shoulders from shaking, but you've already done the damage. You wish it was raining and you had an umbrella, so you could tuck her under the shelter like a ratty, ugly cat and it'd be that simple. The room might be spinning with your bewilderment. "I don't know," you admit.

"You don't know," she repeats dully.

"The only person who can know that is you," you snap. "You heard yourself, didn't you? Stop depending on me! I'm just your kouhai."

"But-"

"All I know," you say, irritated, "is that you've got shit and I've got shit and so does everyone else. I don't have any other answers than what I know. If you wanna know if you and your friendship are anything more than shit, you have to find that out for yourself, won't you?"

Yukiko says nothing, but you can hear her breathing, deep and panicked against the fog-Yukiko's steady rhythm, then smoother, until you can only hear their breath together. When she looks up, you follow her gaze to see the fog-Yukiko's yellow eyes, staring at the two of you with the dispassion of a corpse. "You're right about me," says Yukiko softly. Fog-Yukiko blinks, and her yellow eyes soften. "But I have to believe that so is he," Yukiko continues, almost apologetic. "So I have to leave now. Please don't think I'm running away; I'll always remember you-I'll always remember _myself_. I just... can't be content to stay."

Yukiko pulls herself to her feet, to her full height, and the fog-Yukiko slowly stands with her; two mirror images, both unmovable. "You might be the truth, but you're only one side," Yukiko says, and they nod together. "I won't rest until I have it all."

The fog-Yukiko smiles, and fades into the clear air. Yukiko sighs. She looks up at the fog, her gaze all the more piercing for the peace in her eyes, then at you; she smiles kindly, as her other self did to her, and collapses.


End file.
